Behind the dramatic cancellation of the Sahitya Akademi awards’ announcement last week, the first ever in its history, lies an attempt by the Narendra Modi government to usurp whatever space the autonomous institution has been left with in the last decade.First, here’s a recap to help understand the abruptness of the ambush.The Akademi announces its prestigious awards in 24 languages each year. The juries of all the languages had finalised their awardees following due deliberation. The lists had been approved by the executive board of the Akademi, which had scheduled a press conference to announce the winners on Thursday (December 18). People had arrived at the Akademi to attend the ceremony. They were relishing samosas and chai, when a hurried circular arrived from the Ministry of Culture about the ‘restructuring of awards’.Addressed to the ‘heads’ of the Lalit Kala Akademi, the Sangeet Natak Akademi, the Sahitya Akademi and the National School of Drama, the circular reminded them of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) they had earlier signed with the ministry, which “stipulated” that the “restructuring of Awards is required to be undertaken in consultation with the Ministry”.Until the restructuring “is duly approved by the Ministry, no process for declaration of Awards shall be undertaken without the prior approval of the Ministry,” it noted.The announcement was cancelled, leaving both the Akademi and the juries stunned.Before turning to the absurdity of the circular, note that the winners are chosen by a separate jury for each language, with each jury headed by a convenor. The juries were set up by Pallavi Prashant Holkar, who was appointed the Akademi’s secretary by the ministry after the superannuation of K. Sreenivasarao in October. Holkar is an Indian Audit & Account Services officer of the 2011 batch. Her appointment, Akademi officials point out, was seen as a step by the ministry to extend its control over the institution.More than anyone else, the circular embarrassed Holkar because the Akademi had issued the press release about the ceremony in her name, and she was scheduled to announce the winners.The circular, Akademi officials say, is flawed on several counts. First, if the ministry wanted to restructure the awards, the directions should have been given to the Akademi long before the juries were set up.Second, the award process had begun in January this year, six months before the MoU was signed in July. Any proposal to restructure the awards can’t be applied post-facto.Third, what was the tearing hurry to issue the circular on the date of the announcement, and intruding into the affairs of an autonomous institution? The ministry could have told the Akademi well in advance. Fourth, the press conference was scheduled by the secretary, the ministry’s permanent representative in the Akademi. Was the secretary also in the dark? Who gave the nod for the presser, only for it to be cancelled 24 hours after it was announced?Fifth, while the circular is addressed to four institutions, the ministry, in its attempt to make it look like a wider exercise and not merely targeted at the Sahitya Akademi, overlooked that one of the four, the National School of Drama, doesn’t give any annual awards.Why did, then, the ministry choose this abrupt course? The objection is not over any particular awardee, Akademi officials say, but the ministry’s general intent to control the award process and the selection of awardees. The ministry’s move has confirmed that it can usurp the Akademi’s autonomy and dictate the terms and twist the processes at any stage.The Akademi has lost a great amount of prestige over the last decade. If on the one hand writers accuse it for failing to uphold its august principles, most notably witnessed during the award wapasi (return) campaign in 2015, the Modi government on the other has constantly been trying to invade its space.The July MoU is only an instalment in a series of such attempts. In 2017, this reporter had written about another MoU under which the government wanted various institutions under the Ministry of Culture to generate enough revenue to cover 25-30% of their total budget, and “eventually” achieve “self-sufficiency”.The move was opposed by officials in these institutions. “The worth of the National School of Drama or the Sangeet Natak Akademi cannot be gauged by their ability to generate revenue. They are for public welfare,” said a member of an institution’s executive council.“To promote 24 languages and various dialects, the Sahitya Akademi organises events across the country. Do you want us to put an entry ticket to a story-reading session by a Bodo writer?” said an Akademi official.The present MoU stands apart because it will nearly amount to a takeover of the Akademis by the ministry.Selected by eminent names from each language, the annual awards still carry a gravitas, far more than many private awards clubbed together, and are keenly anticipated by writers across the languages. Some of India’s most notable names have accepted these awards with great pride and honour. If the only pan-Indian awards in literature, music and paintings are to be decided by babus in Shastri Bhawan, their decline can be easily anticipated.If the ministry persists with the ‘restructuring’, a senior official said, the awards would completely lose their worth. The Akademis, set up in the 1950s following the vision of India’s first prime minister, have greatly shaped the building of a national culture that both draws upon its glorious past as well as looks to the future.A day after the Sahitya Akademi was inaugurated on March 12, 1954, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote a letter to the Akademi’s secretary, Krishna Kripalani, expressing concern about Suryakant Tripathi Nirala. Underlining his literary genius, Nehru wrote that the great Hindi writer, “in his folly or extremity”, had sold his “books for a song to various publishers getting just 25 or 30 or 50 rupees”. While the publishers made huge profits, the author had been starving.Nehru now wanted the Akademi to work on an amendment of the copyright law, and to also find a way to help Nirala.If the above is a moving account by a prime minister quietly supporting a writer, the subsequent instance exemplifies his civilisational wisdom.In 1958, Nehru found himself engaged in an intellectual argument with education minister Abul Kalam Azad and Vice President S. Radhakrishnan. The Hindi poet Mahadevi Verma had sought financial assistance for the publication of her translation of Ashvaghosha’s Buddhacarita and the Rig Veda.The founders of the Republic were divided over Verma’s proposal.While Azad believed that the “state patronage of publication of works whose primary significance is religion should be avoided as far as possible”, Radhakrishnan noted that “Edwin Arnold’s The Light of Asia is based on this [Buddhacarita] work and it is treated as a work of literature and not a text of Buddhist religion”.Nehru, who is today vilified by the self-proclaimed nationalist government, went a step ahead and underlined that “books like the Buddha Charita or the Rg Veda are classics of ancient India and can hardly be considered just as religious books”.At stake now is this legacy.