Urdu academy notice to poet over anti-Modi remarks

December 23, 2010 02:30 am | Updated October 17, 2016 09:47 pm IST - AHMEDABAD:

A budding, city-based Urdu poet, Aqeel Shatir — who was slapped with a notice by the Gujarat Urdu Sahitya Academy for alleged anti-Narendra Modi remarks in his book — is uncertain whether the institution will recover the cost with interest.

The remarks were not his but those of another poet, Raunaq Afroz Bhiwandi, who wrote an assessment of Mr. Shatir's book of poems published in 2008, Abhi Zinda Hoon Main (I am still alive).

Mr. Shatir said that whatever the title suggested, his poems were not based on the 2002 communal riots. However, Mr. Bhiwandi had thought so and wrote a piece that portrayed Chief Minister Narendra Modi in a bad light.

The objectionable paragraph from Mr. Bhiwandi's five-page piece was promptly removed by Mr. Shatir before the book went on sale. But the Academy has woken up two years later and issued notice to Mr. Shatir asking why Rs.10,000 given to him — as assistance to budding writers for publishing their books — should not be recovered from him with interest.

The November 15, 2010, notice was served on Mr. Shatir by Academy registrar Harshad Trivedi, accusing him of violating the rules and regulations of the Academy and the undertakings he gave in his acceptance letter — that no change would be made in the handwritten manuscript without its permission.

Accusing him of “cheating,” the notice claimed that while the five copies supplied to the Academy did not contain the objectionable paragraph, “the copies of the book available in the market carry the piece damaging the image of the Chief Minister.”

‘I removed the pages'

In his reply on December 1, Mr. Shatir challenged the Academy to prove that the copies available in the market carried the paragraph.

“As soon as my attention was drawn to it, I personally removed page numbers 13 and 14 carrying the objectionable paragraph from each copy before putting them on sale. It is impossible that any of the 390-odd copies available in the market carry the objectionable paragraph,” he said.

The focus, however, is on the copies that he distributed with his signature to 80-odd guests and listeners at Mushaira organised on October 29, 2008, for the launch of the book. “These books did contain the objectionable paragraph, but these are only for limited circulation,” Mr. Shatir said.

He said one of the guests, writer Mohiuddin Bombaywala — who is also a member of the Academy — informed him through the organiser of the Mushaira that the paragraph against Mr. Modi was not in good taste.

“I immediately realised the gravity of it and personally removed the pages from the remaining 500 copies that were printed for the first edition, including the five copies send to the Academy as per rules,” Mr. Shatir said.

He claimed that no other edition had been published so far, and hence there was no question of the objectionable paragraph cropping up in the books available in the market.

Academy questioned

Mr. Shatir (49), who runs an STD-PCO in the Gomtipur locality, is also a photojournalist working for a Delhi-based weekly Urdu magazine, Akhbar-e-Nau .

He felt that what stirred the Academy into slapping the notice on him was not the Modi issue but the issues he raised under the Right to Information Act questioning the functioning of the Academy.

Irregular functioning

Mr. Shatir said that in May this year, he sent a set of 16 questions under the RTI about the irregular functioning of the Academy, and the “incomplete and evasive answers” provided by the registrar prompted him to send another set of 25 questions.

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