Mangalore, Dec 14: It is a declaration of war on all oppressed groups, if a political party portrays as its prime ministerial candidate a man who was responsible for communal riots in the state of Gujarat. It is an effort to find a final solution to put an end to the oppressed classes in the country, said Director of School of Languages, Literature and Fine Arts in Kuvempu University, Shimoga Dr Rajendra Chenni.
Speaking at the inauguration of 'Jana-Nudi' – a two-day literary meet held under the banner Abhimata Mangalore – at Kalangann in the city on Saturday, he said that today, the latent crimes are more dangerous than manifested ones.
“One of the main moral duties of literature is to call a thing by its exact name. What happened in Gujarat is clearly a process of ethnic killing, which should be called exactly that, and not rebellion. And today, literature should articulate that it was killing and not riots,” he said.
Speaking about Gujarat CM and BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, he said that fascism would not destroy democracy, but would facilitate its destruction by keeping the democracy intact and increasing differences among people in the society.
He spoke about the emergence of so-called markets in today's world which had trivialised poetry and literature, thus preventing the meaning in them to be understood. However, in between the emergence of such markets, poetry should facilitate the will and strength of a person to live in the face of death. “When victims break the silence on their sufferings, poetry arises,” he said.
Senior writer Sara Aboobaker said that it had become a hobby for the government to donate huge sums of money to mutts and temples, but did little for persons rendered invalid due to the use of Endosulfan in eastern parts of Dakshina Kannada and Kasaragod.
She also spoke of Muslims being forcefully driven out of their homes by hateful communal forces in states such as Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Orissa, Bihar, Assam, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh recently.
In his presidential address, writer Prof S G Siddaramaiah expressed concern if the power of cultural policy-making came to the hands of communal forces who try to distort history by stating false facts in academic textbooks.
He said that the United States refusing to issue visa to Modi was a warning that the World War III was inevitable if a person responsible for mass-murders became the ruler of a country.
Writers Dr H S Anupama and Kadidalu Shamanna also spoke on the occasion.
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