AMN /
Writer-activist Arundhati Roy today announced that she felt “proud” to return her national award as part of what she called an unparalleled political movement against ideological viciousness.
Ms Roy said in an article published in an English daily, if we do not have the right to speak freely, we will turn into a society that suffers from intellectual malnutrition.
The 55-year-old won the national award in 1989 for the film “In Which Annie Gives it Those Ones”. She has also won the Booker Prize for her book “The God of Small Things”.
Ms Roy is the latest to join the campaign that has come to be known as “Award Wapsi” by writers, artists and filmmakers protesting against what they term as “rising intolerance,” following incidents like the murder of rationalists and the mob killing of a Muslim man in Uttar Pradesh’s Dadri over rumours that he had beef in his house.