Indians have lost the right and the opportunity to dissent, writer T. Padmanabhan has said.
The right to dissent formed the cornerstone of democracy, said Mr. Padmanabhan, inaugurating a literary meet held in connection with the State-level conference of library activists organised by the Kerala State Library Council on Monday.
“Writers and artists, both men and women, who voiced dissent are slowly vanishing from our midst,” he said. The government machinery was responsible for it, but the culprits went unpunished, he added. It was happening in a land where sages sang for the entire world. Lessons on Sree Narayana Guru, Bhagat Singh and Periyar E.V. Ramasamy were being slowly dropped from textbooks. In an age when survival itself was at stake, what was he to say on literature and art, asked the writer.
Pluralism had never destroyed India at any point of time, said poet K. Satchidanandan, addressing the meet. The proponents of Hindutva were promoting disunity. “The Indian people are the result of numerous migrations. We are neither Aryans or Dravidians, but a mixture of different races,” he said.
