IFFI gets flak for removing anti-caste poem of late litterateur Vishnu Wagh from daily
The ongoing IFFI dropped a poem of the late well-known poet and former MLA Vishnu Wagh from its festival daily at the last minute. It was supposed to appear along with an illustration
The International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa finds itself in the midst of an unseemly controversy.
According to an Instagram post penned by anti-caste artist Siddesh Gautam, the organisers dropped the translation of a Konkani poem on caste discrimination written by well-known late Goan writer Vishnu Surya Wagh, from its festival daily magazine.
Interestingly, Wagh, a vocal anti-caste activist, had been a former BJP MLA from St Andre constituency and the former speaker of the Goa assembly. He had passed away in 2019 of a heart attack when he was 53 years old.
On November 26, an anti-caste artist Siddhesh Gautam took to Instagram to expose the IFFI for not publishing Wagh’s poem in their festival daily, The Peacock. According to Gautam, the IFFI's daily only carried his artwork but told him to drop the translation of Wagh’s poem to go along with it.
“I was asked to not publish a poem by Vishnu Surya Wagh for today’s issue. Wagh’s poem Secular (is one that) I carefully chose because it expresses so many incidents of caste discrimination by many on a daily basis in both urban and rural areas,” he wrote in his Instagram post.
“I myself have gone through something similar many times in my life, not just as an unknown student, but also as a well-known artist," added Gautam, who then went ahead and added the English translation of Wagh's poem in the post.
Anti-establishment
Meanwhile, PhD scholar Kaustubh Naik, who is Wagh’s nephew also posted about this incident. He said that the magazine had asked him to translate a poem from Wagh's collection called Sudirsukta. They had told him it will appear along with a double-page illustration spread by artist Siddhesh Gautam in the daily's November 26 issue.
However, he learnt late in the night that the Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG), the nodal agency that organises IFFI on behalf of the Goa government, was not going to publish Wagh's poem in their edition. Calling it an “act of censorhip”, Gautam said that "the poems take an anti-establishment stance" perhaps that is the reason for the censorship.
Ankita Mishra, CEO of ESG, the nodal agency that organises IFFI for the Goa government, told Indian Express that the decision to not publish Wagh's poem was an editorial call "purely taken for creative reasons".
Who is Wagh?
Besides being a poet, Vishnu Surya Wagh, a well-known name in Konkani and Marathi literary circles, was a playwright, cartoonist, journalist, and politician. Belonging to Goa’s largest Hindu community, the Bhandaris, which falls under the Other Backward Caste (OBC) category, he was a fierce critic of caste-based oppression.
Wagh’s collection of poems, Sudirsukta - Hymns of a Shudra from which the IFFI daily was going to publish a poem, had got embroiled in a major controversy in 2017. There was an uproar at that time, after it was leaked that the Goa Konkani Academy (GKA) was going to give an award to the book under the poetry category.
Goa’s dominant castes, especially Gaud Saraswat Brahmin groups, were angry with the book. It also faced criticism for allegedly endorsing communal views. That's when the state government cancelled all the literature and culture awards, including the one for Wagh.
His poems spoke about the caste discrimination suffered by the Bahujan Samaj. Ironically, Wagh, who had also been with the Shiv Sena and a Congress loyalist before switching camps, had been ESG's vice-chariman. He was however removed from this post in 2014 because he was openly critical of the BJP leadership. However, he was reinstated a year later.
Ankita Mishra, CEO of the ESG told Indian Express that the decision to not carry Wagh's poem was an editorial call "purely taken for creative reasons".
