The Gujarat Sahitya Akademi has criticised poet Parul Khakhar for her poem on the bodies of suspected Covid-19 patients found floating in ...
The Gujarat Sahitya Akademi has criticised poet Parul Khakhar for her poem on the bodies of suspected Covid-19 patients found floating in river Ganga in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, saying that it was being used to spread “anarchy”, reported The Indian Express on Thursday.
In an editorial in Gujarat Sahitya Akademi official publication, Shabdashrushti, the academy’s chairperson Vishnu Pandya also called the residents circulating or discussing the poem “literary Naxals”.
The poem Shav Vahini Ganga, originally written by Khakhar in Gujarati, criticises the Narendra Modi government and talks about the suffering of Indians during the second coronavirus wave, according to The Wire. Khakhar had posted the poem on her Facebook page on May 11, and it has since then been translated into at least six languages, including Hindi and English.
The poem talks about the massive number of deaths during the second wave that had left the crematoriums overloaded. The 14-line satire refers to the country as “Ram rajya” (the kingdom of deity Ram), where river Ganga has become a “shav vahini” (hearse).
This is in reference to thousands of bodies that have been found floating or buried alongside river Ganga in districts of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh during the second wave of Covid cases.
In the editorial, Pandya does not directly mention the poem but confirmed...
