I will return Sahitya Akademi prize money too, with interest: Nayantara Sahgal

DEHRADUN: After deciding to return the Sahitya Akademi award to register her “right to dissent” against growing instances of tolerance in the country, author and literary commentator Nayantara Sahgal on Thursday announced that she will also return the prize money that she received, “along with interest.”
Disclosing that she will be sending an amount of Rs 1 lakh to the Sahitya Akademi, the noted writer, who is also the niece of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, said that she decided to return the prize money after a statement made by the Sahitya Akademi president.“The president of the Sahitya Akademi, without referring to me or Ashok Vajpeyi (who has also announced that he will return the award), told the press that even if we return the award and money, we have not returned the interest on the prize money. This was a very unfortunate statement. Therefore, both of us have decided to give back Rs one lakh, which is the current cash component of the Sahitya Akademi prize. He has already done it. I will be doing so in a day or two.”
Sahgal had won the prize in 1986 for her novel ‘Rich Like Us’. On October 6, she had created a flutter by announcing that she will be returning her award as a mark of protest against growing intolerance in the country and in support of those who dare to dissent.
In an open letter titled ‘The Unmaking of India’, the 88-year-old writer, who is Jawaharlal Nehru’s niece, referred to the recent lynching of Mohammed Akhtaq who was killed on the supposed suspicion that beef was cooked in his home. Asserting that the right to dissent, an integral part of the Constitutional guarantee was being threatened, Sahgal wrote that “distinguished Kannada writer and Sahitya Akademi Award winner, M M Kalburgi, and two Maharashtrians, Narendra Dhabolkar and Govind Pansare, both anti-superstition activists, had all been killed by gun-toting motor-cyclists. Other dissenters have been warned they are next in line…In memory of the Indians who have been murdered, in support of all Indians who uphold the right to dissent, and of all dissenters who now live in fear and uncertainty, I am returning my Sahitya Akademi Award.”
Blaming PM Modi for rising instances of intolerance in the country, the writer told TOI, “Modi’s silence is deliberate. He can speak eloquently when he wants to. So why can’t he say a word about Indians who are being slaughtered and denied the right to freedom of speech, life and religion?”