The response of some parts of India to Indian writers returning their Sahitya Akademi awards is intriguing, distressing and ultimately amusing, when it backfires on those mocking the writers, as it must.

After Hindi poet and scholar Uday Prakash returned his award, following the murder of Kannada author and scholar MM Kalburgi, there has been a stream of writers joining him. These writers come from all over India and write in all Indian languages. Some, like novelist and political commentator and contemporary historian Nayantara Sahgal, novelist Shashi Deshpande and poet extraordinaire Keki Daruwalla (with whom I studied in school), write in English and have attracted a bit more attention. The eloquent, erudite Hindi poet Ashok Vajpayi has been extremely forthright on TV and in print on why he has returned his award, regardless of whether his childish critics have heard of him or not, as has Sahgal.