Prestigous awards are milestones in an artist's life and one does not lightly decide on returning what one has laboriously earned. Notwithstanding such returning of awards the honour and prestige that the recipient has garnered does not get diminished and in fact seems to get enhanced. The returning of a once conferred award signifies a growing discontent that erupts into an act of withdrawal or relinquishment as Gopalkrishna Gandhi writes when reminding us that Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi both returned their awards after the massacre at Jallianwalla Bagh.
The target of disillusionment seems to be government authorities, Central and State arising from the fact that the Sahitya Academies are institutions supported solely by the state. Rulers have always supported the arts and patronage from Kings has yielded now to patronage from elected governments. With the rise of giant corporations in the modern industrialized world one finds an expression of corporate social responsibility in corporate supported foundations encouraging
artists with awards that carry substantial purses and coveted for the enormous prestige that accompanies them.
Here then is a wonderful opportunity for enlightened Indian corporates to enter the vacuum being created and produce bodies like the Man Booker foundation and the Pulitzer foundation, instituting independent juries of learned persons to select men and women of distinction in the various forms of arts.With such actions can they overcome the tag of Philistinism and ensure that unfettered creativity in the arts will always prevail. I only know of the Hindu Literary Award from the Hindu Group of publications that is seeming to be the exception that proves the rule.
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