It is a well-known fact that infamous award wapsi of 2015 was a meticulously organized anti-Modi campaign sponsored by sympathizers of the Congress party. All the self-declared intellectuals, losers from various fields and hypocrites gathered and ran a malicious campaign against the democratically elected Modi government. But their stunt failed to achieve its objective because the political motivations of the award wapsi gang were very obvious. In an era of internet and social media, it is very difficult to fool the people. People were quick to question the hypocrisy of award wapsi gang, countered their rhetoric with facts and exposed their nefarious political agenda. And now, the celebrated Hindi poet and former Sahitya Akademi President, Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari, has also claimed that the so-called award wapsi movement in 2015 was a politically motivated campaign organized by Marxist writers and Hindi poet Ashok Vajpeyi to tarnish the image of the government in the run-up to the Bihar assembly elections.
According to an Economic Times report, Tiwari has published his claims in a 10-page write-up in the literary magazine ‘Dastavez’. In the piece titled ‘The truth of award-wapsi and the hypocrisy behind it’, Tiwari said that four-month-long campaign was motivated by mainly three groups of writers- chronic haters of Prime Minister Modi, the ones whose friends in politics wanted to tarnish the image of government and a group of 25 publicity hungry writers. Tiwari said, “I have evidence to prove award wapsi was not spontaneous but an organized effort led by five writers, many of whom were holding anti-Modi sabhas even before he came to power.” He further said that Vajpeyi launched the movement only because of personal reasons and hatred against Modi, the Sahitya Akademi and Vishwanath Tiwari himself.
Vishwanath Tiwari has also published the text messages and the letters he had received from the writers during the period of so-called award wapsi, many of whom said that they were being forced by their fellow writers to be part of the movement. Tiwari further wrote, “Liberty of individuals is the biggest strength we have in times like these. But it is also a dangerous weapon. There was significant intellectual dishonesty in the award wapsi campaign, which from the start was only to make a political point.”
Tiwari mentioned the name of Virendra Yadav, Akhilesh and Kashinath Singh who were part of the so-called award wapsi campaign and later on celebrated Lalu’s victory in Bihar election at a Kathakaram event in Lucknow.
Tiwari mentioned the name of Kashinath Singh who had promised not to return his award, but just two days later he was seen complaining about “rising intolerance” in an interview. According to ET, Tiwari said, “The irony is he did not return the award that UP government gave him, despite the fact that Dadri, where Akhlak’s lynching took place, was in UP. Even more ironical is that there were some writers who happily accepted awards during the emergency but cried intolerance in 2015.” He also accused the communist writers’ group of creating conflict between Sahitya Akademi and writers.
Tiwari also claimed that the same group of writers met at the house of house of JD (U) leader KC Tyagi on July 20, 2016. He further said, “They had a mental block in their minds against the Centre right from the beginning which they expressed as intolerance. In reality, it was their intolerance to the democratic mandate that was striking.”
In his write-up, Tiwari also alleged that Vajpeyi had his own share of problem with the Sahitya Akademi because the ministry and Akademi had refused to associate with his Raza foundation for an event. He also accused Vajpeyi of hiding the fact that Sahitya Akademi had organized a huge prayer meeting in Bengaluru after the murder of writer MM Kalburgi. Tiwari also said that Vajpeyi had even attempted to resign from the Sahitya Akademi. Vajpeyi also suggested of holding a prayer meeting for Kalburgi in Delhi. Tiwari said, “They refused to even entertain the suggestion saying Delhi is not India and that the Akademi had anyway organized a huge prayer meeting for the writer in Bengaluru and other places.” He also wrote, “In the world of Hindi literature, not being a Marxist is inviting isolation. While all this was going on, I was only worried about the dignity and honor of the institution which was being played around with.”
Tiwari’s article has completely exposed the malicious campaign ran by the so-called intellectual and leftist writers to defame the Modi government. Since the Modi government came to power the intellectuals and leftist writers are a distressed lot, because they have lost their political patronage. Over a period of decades, the Congress had put in place a system to reward these intellectuals and leftist writers by conferring upon them awards, or chairmanship of important institutes, or plum postings to ensure that independent intellectuals were converted into political pets. Time and again, these Indian intellectuals would go out, cry rivers on the state of affairs and then happily accept the reward from a government minister.
Not just award-wapsi, left-leaning intellectuals and writers sponsored many protest and hate-campaign to malign Modi government but their each and every protest was a huge flop show. Their protests never gained any traction among the common folks and the political masters of these protests had to keep looking for readymade issues. They made several baseless accusations against PM Modi and his ministers but they have fallen flat on their faces including the recent one, the fictional ‘Rafale scam’. It looks like opposition and their coteries in Media and academia have still not learned learned any lessons and thus, they are likely to suffer again in 2019.