by Our Foreign Desk

DOZENS of novelists, essayists, playwrights and poets announced yesterday that they were returning India’s highest literary honour in protest at a rising tide of intolerance since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office.

The winners of the Sahitya Akademi award declared that they could not remain silent about numerous incidents of communal violence and attacks on intellectuals across the country over the past year.

They are angry that the National Academy of Letters has said little about the murder of renowned rationalist Malleshappa Kalburgi, who was gunned down in August for his writings opposing superstition and false beliefs.

Novelist Salman Rushdie, who was born in Mumbai, backed the writers, saying that government silence was allowing a new “degree of thuggish violence” in India.

The government dismissed the writers’ protests, accusing them of being politically motivated. “If they say they are unable to write, let them stop writing,” sneered Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma.

The writers criticise a growing climate of intolerance and curbs on free speech, saying they cannot be mute spectators.

“It’s become a question of an individual’s right to speak, to think, to write, to eat, to dress, to debate,” said playwright and actor Maya Krishna Rao, who returned her award to the academy this week.

The protesters note that every day brings more evidence of intolerance and bigotry going mainstream — a man lynched allegedly for eating beef, an atheist critic of Hindu idol worship shot down — all met by a deafening silence from the government.

When Mr Modi won a landslide victory in May 2014, many voiced fears that right-wing Hindu nationalism would lead to communal violence.

The prime minister, who spent years dodging allegations that he had failed to stop riots in Gujarat state in 2002 that killed 1,000 Muslims, claimed to be governing for all.

But the last year has seen a crescendo of violence as extremist groups try to impose a regressive Hindu nationalism on the whole country.

State governments ruled by Mr Modi’s Hindu chauvinist BJP have cracked down on cow slaughter.

Even buffalo meat, a key source of protein for poor Muslims and lower-caste Hindus, has become scarce.