Kundan, Roy return awards

Mumbai: Another 24 filmmakers, including Kundan Shah of “Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro” fame, Saeed Mirza and Booker winning writer Arundhati Roy on Thursday returned their National Awards in an escalation of protests by intellectuals against “growing intolerance” in the country.

With this, at least 75 members of the intelligentsia have either returned national or literary awards even as writer Nayantara Sahgal reiterated that “secularism was under threat” like never before. Sahgal, niece of Jawaharlal Nehru, was among the first to return the honours when she gave back the Sahitya Akademi award.

The filmmakers strongly rallied behind students of the prestigious FTII who recently called of their 136-day strike, saying their battle went beyond the manipulation of education to include “intolerance, divisiveness and hate”.

As they added to the voice against the “growing disregard” for freedom of speech and the murder of three intellectuals, Roy was quoted as having said that she was returning the honour in protest against “ideological viciousness”. She had received the 1989 National Film Award for Best Screenplay for the documentary “In which Annie Gives it to those Ones”.

Other prominent names in the list of those who have returned the awards on Thursday included documentary filmmaker Anwar Jamal, director Virendra Saini, Pradip Krishnen, Manoj Lobo, sound designers Vivek Sachidanand, P M Satheesh, Ajay Raina, director Sudhakar Reddy Yakkanti, editor Irene Dhar Malik, cinematographer Satya Rai Nagpaul, director Amitabh Chakraborty, filmmaker Tapan Bose and Madhusree Dutta.