Author Vikram Sampath has faced the darts and arrows of criticism, even tirade, with unmatchable equanimity and is prepared to wage a protracted battle to safeguard artistic and intellectual freedom
Rishi Sabharwal
Bhubaneswar, Nov 7: Author and historian Vikram Sampath got embroiled in a controversy last year after his piece ‘Why I won’t return my Akademi award’ was published in The Mint. It stirred a hornet’s nest at a time when a bevy of writers and intellectuals happened to be returning their awards in protest against the growing intolerance in the country. As a result of the unsavoury controversy he found himself entangled in, Sampath stepped down as director of the Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF), an event he had helmed. Sampath had earlier been widely praised for the huge success of the festival’s previous installments. The author is the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar.
Among members of the intelligentsia who boycotted BLF which was held December 5 and 6 last year were Sahitya Akademi award winning Malayali writer Sarah Joseph, her daughter Sangeetha Sreenivasan, Kannada poet Arif Raja, literary critic O L Nagabhushana Swamy and writer T K Dayananda all of whom led the massive protest against Sampath and the views he had articulated in the article.
The author of three critically acclaimed non-fiction works in the genre of historical narrative – Splendours of Royal Mysore — The Untold Story of Wodeyars, My Name is Gauhar Jaan! and Voice of the Veena, S Balachander: A Biography — Sampath, who visited Orissa recently to attend the Orissa Literary Festival where he engaged in enlightening conversation with former Union Minister Salman Khurshid, spoke to Orissa POST on the ‘award wapsi’ stir and other pressing issues on the sidelines of the literary event.
Claiming that the award-returning issue degenerated from the “sublime” to the “ridiculous”, Sampath contended: “The ‘wapsi’ was a chain reaction. There were some ridiculous statements that claimed some writers were returning awards in protest against the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. If that is true, what were these writers doing from 1984 to 2015?”
“Many intellectuals boycotted the literary event because their opinions didn’t match with those of others. Isn’t this intolerance?” Sampath was quoted as saying in a media report.
According to the historian, the entire issue later snowballed into a “political campaign” where hordes of literary figures and artists “blindly followed” a conscious move orchestrated by some. Referring to Salman Rushdie, M F Husain, Sanal Edamaruku and T J Joseph, Sampath said the intolerance issue has existed in our country “since independence”.
“His (Rushdie’s) book was banned in India even before the totalitarian regime of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran had done it,” he noted.
Sampath voiced his support for the present dispensation in New Delhi and added that the government had been doing whatever was necessary to acknowledge and address the grievances of writers and artists.
“To pin the cause of intolerance down on one particular regime or to target the present government for it is wrong,” he said.
“I have faced opposition for my writings on Tipu Sultan and my talks were drowned in raucous shouting at different events. Even my effigy was burnt at the heart of Bangalore – MG Road,” Sampath said.
In a controversial piece published in October 2016, Sampath argued the Akademi was not run by the government, but it was constituted of a 99-member general council comprising writers like him. “It is intriguing that the literary community was largely silent when books were banned, authors attacked and rationalists killed. Why the selective outrage, as though apocalypse has descended on us as far as freedom of expression is concerned? Intolerance and violence against a contrary opinion is not a sudden phenomenon in India,” the article observed.
Intolerance, he said, persisted across religions.
One of the reasons behind the protest that Sampath identified was that a few “writers and artists made a living”, thanks to the patronage of the previous UPA government. He said: “During the Congress government, some of the artists made a living out of state largesse. But with regime change, many of them felt left out. It was an orchestrated campaign that suddenly fizzled out.”
Moreover, Sampath has been in the limelight due to his views on Tipu Sultan. The inspiration for his debut work on the Wadiyar dynasty of Mysore was the yesteryear TV show ‘The Sword of Tipu Sultan’. During his early teens, Sampath had a strange fascination for the show. After thorough research, he found the portrayal of a king and queen in the show “objectionable”.
Admitting that he never intended to write the book, Sampath said: “My idea was to find out the truth behind the false representation in the show.”