Union Finance minister Arun Jaitley launched a fierce attack on the writers who have returned their Sahitya Akademi awards by saying these people had manufactured a protest.
The authors had returned their awards in protest of killing of Mohammad Akhlaq for allegedly eating beef in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, which in turn had sparked the doubt on the timing and motivation of this protestors.
to protest against the alleged spike in intolerance under the Modi government, saying the agitators had manufactured a protest and were indulging in politics by other means due to their ideological intolerance.
While calling the killing of Mohammad Akhlaq as “extremely unfortunate and condemnable”, Jaitley said, “writers with Left or Nehruvian leaning” were not comfortable with the Modi population.
“Is this protest real or a manufactured one? Is this not a case of ideological intolerance?” finance minister asked.
“The new strategy of anti-Modi, anti-BJP sections appears to be to resort to politics by other means. The easiest way is to manufacture a crisis and subsequently manufacture a paper rebellion against the government in the wake of a manufactured crisis,” added Jaitley.
“A few questions to the protestors: How many of them courted arrest, protested or raised their voice against the dictatorship of Mrs. Indira Gandhi during the Emergency? Did the writers speak against the Sikh killings of 1984 or the Bhagalpur riots of 1989? Was their conscience not shaken by the corruption involving lakhs of crores between 2004 and 2014?” Jaitley strongly counter attacked.
“The protest at that time highlighted two factors; firstly that this was an attack on institutions of minority community and secondly, the prime minister was quiet about it. Once the truth of these attacks as being cases of crime was established, the propaganda and propagandists have both disappeared,” he added.
“Nobody has alleged any governmental complacency in these crimes. But to manufacture a revolt, it is necessary to obfuscate the truth and create the impression that the Modi government is responsible for these crimes even if they took place in Congress and Samajwadi Party ruled states. In fact, one of the protesting writers in 2015, while returning her Padma Shri, has cited the Sikh killings of 1984 as one of her reasons. It took 31 years for this writer’s conscience to be aroused by the genocide of 1984. There is no atmosphere of intolerance in the country. The manufactured revolt is a case of an ideological intolerance towards the BJP,” Jaitley said.
(With input from Times Of India)
Tags: Arun Jaitley
