Former Sahitya Akademi president Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari has alleged that the Award Wapsi movement, was a politically motivated campaign organised by Marxists, Economic Times has reported.

Tiwari has made these claims in his article titled, “The truth of award-wapsi and the hypocrisy behind it” which was published in the magazine Dastavez.

The Award Wapsi movement famously emerged in 2015 when about 50 writers returned their awards in protest of what they claimed was ‘rising intolerance’ under the Narendra Modi government.

Tiwari now claims that this was a politically motivated affair planned by Marxist writers and Hindi poet Ashok Vajpeyi, to defame the Modi government ahead of the Bihar assembly elections.

He wrote that the four-month long campaign was promoted by writers, some of whom had a hatred towards Modi, a few wanted to defame the government and others were looking for publicity.

He also claimed that he has evidence to prove that Award Wapsi was a brainchild of five writers, most of whom had been holding anti-Modi sabhas before he became Prime Minister.

In his article he published text messages and letters he received from various writers who claim that they were being pressurised by their colleagues to join the movement.

Poet Ashok Vajpeyi has denied Tiwari’s claims but the latter has stuck to his guns and claimed that he wrote the article to bring out the real face of writers who called themselves, “champions of free speech”.