IT IS India’s most coveted literary honour. But over the past month, at least 40 Indian novelists, poets and playwrights have returned the prize awarded by the Sahitya Akademi, the National Academy of Letters, to protest against what they say is a surge of violent Hindu nationalism in India, imperilling freedom of speech and other secular rights and traditions. Salman Rushdie and other Western writers have spoken up in support of the protest. What are the grounds for it?



The row began in September after Malleshappa Kalburgi, an academic, was shot dead at his home in the southern state of Karnataka; he had previously received death threats for his criticisms of idol worship in Hinduism. Some members of the National Academy of Writers, where Mr Kalburgi once served as a senior official, complained that the organisation had issued no formal statement condemning his murder. They suggested this was because the academy had received funding from India’s Hindu-nationalist central government, which many of the writers accuse of encouraging an atmosphere of religious intolerance. The writers began handing back their awards, sparking what may be the most serious protest against the government of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since it came to power in May 2014.



The BJP says the protest is a political stunt. It might seem to have a point. India’s literati tend to be secular and left-wing; its members tend to dislike the BJP prime minister, Narendra Modi, almost as much for his pro-business talk as for his party’s history of promoting hardline political Hinduism. But the abuses against religious tolerance that the protesters cite are real. In October a Muslim was murdered on the outskirts of Delhi by a Hindu mob who said he had killed a cow for its meat. The BJP has helped whip up feeling on the issue by saying the slaughter of cows should be illegal. Mr Modi was slow to offer his sympathies to the man's family, further angering secularists. Had he been a Hindu, murdered by a Muslim, it is difficult to imagine that he would not have reacted more quickly.

This row is making Indians, and especially its religious minorities, nervous. The BJP rose to prominence in the 1990s after a spate of communal violence, which its supporters helped stir, that left thousands dead. As chief minister of Gujarat, Mr Modi was linked to riots that claimed the lives of over a thousand people, most of them Muslims, in 2002. And the electoral politics from which such conflicts often stem is evident again. The BJP has been campaigning for a key election in the populous eastern state of Bihar, which makes it especially reliant on its most ideologically motivated foot-soldiers, members of its parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak (RSS). The latest issue of the RSS’s journal, Panchjanya, includes an article that quotes Hindu scriptures to justify the killing of any “sinner” who kills a cow. Mr Modi speaks up for secularism when pressed. But as long as he seems reluctant to condemn personally such flagrant incitement, the prospect of more violence looms.