Shashi Deshpande resigns from Sahitya Akademi panel in protest

October 09, 2015 17:03

Award-winning author Shashi Deshpande today resigned from the Sahitya Akademi General Council expressing "a sense of strong disappointment" over the literary body's silence on the killing of Kannada writer M M Kalburgi.

In her letter to Akademi chairperson Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari, the 77-year-old author said, "I do this with regret, and with the hope that the Akademi will go beyond organising programmes, and giving prizes, to being involved with crucial issues that affect Indian writers' freedom to speak and write".

Deshpande, author of several novels, short stories and essay collections and books for children, won the Sahitya Akademi award for her novel That Long Silence in 1990. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2009. Her action comes in the wake of a parade of litterateurs renouncing their coveted prizes.

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