Just in: Jawaharlal Nehru's niece, writer Nayantara Sahgal, has returned the Sahitya Akademi award she won in 1986 for her novel Rich Like Us. She said that the government has failed to protect cultural diversity.

"Rationalists who question superstition, anyone who questions any aspect of the ugly and dangerous distortion of Hinduism known as Hindutva -- whether in the intellectual or artistic sphere, or whether in terms of food habits and lifestyle -- are being marginalized, persecuted, or murdered. A distinguished Kannada writer and Sahitya Akademi Award winner, M M Kalburgi, and two Maharashtrians, Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare, both anti-superstition activists, have all been killed by gun-toting motor-cyclists. Other dissenters have been warned they are next in line. Most recently, a village blacksmith, Mohammed Akhlaq, was dragged out of his home in Bisara village outside Delhi, and brutally lynched, on the supposed suspicion that beef was cooked in his home," she said.

"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," she added in her statement.

Photograph: Seema Pant/Rediff.com

Read: The interview with Nayantara Sahgal here