Liberal democratic spirit under assault: Ashok Vajpeyi

Hyderabad: Eminent Hindi poet and former bureaucrat Ashok Vajpeyi said there was violence against dissenters, information seekers, women, minorities, Christians, Dalits and Adivasis and the State was watching mutely or was complicit in these acts of violence.

The noted writer and poet, in his keynote address at the inauguration of Hyderabad Literary Festival at Hyderabad Public School on Friday, said, “There is growing intolerance in the country. And I had the audacity to return Sahitya Akademi Award against the growing intolerance.

More than 50 writers joined the cause and returned their Sahitya awards too. I also returned the honorary D Litt degree bestowed upon me by University of Hyderabad after the suicide of Rohith Vemula.”

“There is parochialism and religious and caste strife. There is violence of every kind including murder, rape and abduction at social, personal and academic levels. There is violence against writers and intellectuals. And three of them (MM Kalburgi, Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare) were murdered just because they had their view with which the murderers did not agree,” he added.

“There is massive ‘othering’ of substantial sections of population. They could be your linguistic others, religious others, caste others, ideological others and all kinds of others and all wars are fought more or less to demolish the ‘other’.

All the wars that are taking place today are aimed at demolishing the other whereas the Indian traditional wisdom was that there is no other. Actually, what we think as others are part of us. We are obsessed with making others. So there are nationalists and ‘others’ are anti-nationalists.”

Ashok Vajpeyi stated that we were now living in fact-free and post-truth times. “These are very two interesting words. There is no longer need for facts. Two biggest countries, the USA and the UK, through their President and Prime Minister, chose to speak lies; That Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and they could not find it - they kept on insisting on this and destroyed a civilisation while speaking lies.

And now it has become pastime of politicians. We know they are lies but somehow we endear to the lies they speak. And the world over, the liberal democratic spirit is under assault. It is not merely a phenomenon in India. Look at what is happening in Europe, Africa, Latin America and the USA. So, it’s a growing phenomenon where the idea of the liberal itself is now being put into question.”

Ashok Vajpeyi feels that backward, regressive, reactionary ideas are being promoted in a big way in India and technology can be used for spreading regressive, reactionary, anti-social anti-human ideas.

The poet said institutions in India, especially cultural and educational institutions, have collapsed, and school education is better than higher education. “Our higher education has collapsed and the people, who survived are being killed.

By Navin Pivhal