The withdrawal of the Yashwantrao Chavan Literature Award 2021 to Anagha Lele (pictured) for her translation of my book Fractured Freedom: A Prison Memoir ("Award withdrawn,” Events and Personalities, Parsiana, January 7-20, 2023) was at the behest of a handful of people linked to the Rashtriya Swayemsevak Sangh (RSS) who prevailed on the government to reverse its 
decision without any reference to the book’s content or quality of translation. Long before the award was retracted, a number of literary figures had telephoned to say that the translation was so good that it read like the original.
While the announcement of the award on December 6, 2022 went largely unnoticed, its withdrawal and the disbanding of the selection committee on December 12 raised a storm in Maharashtra with a large section of the literary world coming out in protest against the infringement of the freedom of expression. About 30 Marathi literary personalities led by Raosaheb Kasbe sent an open letter on the very next day to the minister in charge of the Marathi Bhasha Vibhag (Marathi language department) who was responsible for the retraction. Author Anand Karandikar announced that he was returning his own award in protest against the government’s action. Sharad Baviskar, a lecturer at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, returned his award saying he upholds the traditions of Shau Maharaj-Phule-Ambedkar and the step taken by the government was fascist in nature. Poet Neeraja resigned from the government’s Sahitya Sanskruti Mandal in protest as did several members of the Rajya Sahitya Sankrutik Mandal and Laxmikant Deshmukh and Suhas Palshikar from the Language Advisory Committee of the Maharashtra Government.
On December 16 about 100 literary personalities gathered in Poona where a number of speeches were made, including by translator Lele. There was another protest at Dombivli, a suburb of Bombay, on December 15, in which a number of organizations and individuals participated.
The original book in English, published in March 2021, has been a bestseller on Amazon for much of this time and is still selling well. The book was later translated into Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Kannada and recently into Hindi. The Tamil version will soon be out as also other Indian languages.
The award has been given for the quality of the translation and not the content of the book. It is unfortunate that the government should have fallen prey to adverse influences and cancelled the award. This does not in any way diminish the quality and ability of translator Lele for whom this was a professional undertaking. Her livelihood is dependent on her translations and it would be unfair to deny her the award which includes a purse of one lakh rupees.
KOBAD GHANDY
kobad1947@gmail.com