An Appeal to Progressive Cultural Activists and Writers of Chhattisgarh
Revolutionary greetings to all of you on the New Year.
Comrades,
In our view, it is absolutely necessary to boycott or oppose the Raipur Literature Festival being organised under the patronage of the fascist double-engine government of Chhattisgarh. However, the reason for doing so should not be limited only to the dictatorial and arbitrary behaviour of the Sangh-backed Vice-Chancellor of Guru Ghasidas Central University towards the writer Manoj Rupda. Undoubtedly, the insult and humiliation meted out to Manoj ji, and the affront to the dignity of the literary community, have sparked protests across the country at the initiative of progressive cultural activists of Chhattisgarh. This is certainly an encouraging sign.
At the same time, we all know that today a key agenda of the fascist Sangh Parivar is the distortion and communalisation of India’s history and culture. That is why the Sangh Parivar has installed its people in universities, educational institutions, and cultural and literary academies across the country. But in our opinion, opposing the Raipur Literature Festival only on the issue of insult to the literary fraternity would amount to pursuing our objectives in an incomplete manner.
Today, Chhattisgarh, under the guidance of Sanghi Manuvadi fascist forces, is running shoulder to shoulder with Uttar Pradesh as a new model of the Hindu Rashtra. It is the social responsibility of progressive cultural activists and writers to oppose the transformation of the state into a killing field for minorities, especially Christians. Should this not be raised as a central issue in the opposition to the Raipur Literature Festival?
Should it not also be raised that, despite being an Adivasi-majority state, the most brutal repression is being unleashed on Adivasi communities in order to accelerate the plunder of natural resources by massively corrupt corporate houses like Adani, Ambani and Jindal? The BJP government, which proclaims “one tree in the name of mother,” has handed over the entire Hasdeo forest to Adani. In Bastar, in the name of eliminating Maoism, Adivasis are being killed in fake encounters, subjected to large-scale massacres, state prisons are being filled with innocent Adivasis, and countless sexual atrocities are being committed against Adivasi women—this is the very character of the RSS, the world’s largest and oldest fascist organisation, and its so-called “Viksit Bharat.”
One after another, misogynist storytellers with criminal backgrounds, who speak crudely and act on the instructions of the Sangh Parivar, are spreading poison of hatred and division against minorities, Dalits and women, polluting the peaceful social fabric of the state and glorifying violent Hindutva. Do these realities not call upon our progressive writers and artists to create resistance through their writings and art?
A poor worker from Chhattisgarh, Ramnarayan Baghel, is lynched to death in Kerala by saffron mobs after being branded a Bangladeshi. Eight workers from Bengal are brutally beaten in Surajpur district of Chhattisgarh simply because they are Muslims and demanded higher wages; four of them are still critically injured. In Kanker, the body of the father of an Adivasi sarpanch—who is a Christian—is exhumed from the grave under police protection and taken to an unknown location, while Bajrang Dal unleashes violence against Christians and their places of worship. Matters reached an extreme when, on Christmas Day, the very saffron goons responsible for violence and vandalism in Kanker enforced a Chhattisgarh bandh under state patronage. During the bandh, Christians and mall workers were attacked and large-scale destruction was carried out.
The entire country witnessed who these Bajrang Dal goons were and how they indulged in hooliganism. Yet the Chhattisgarh police first hesitated to arrest them, and later imposed such mild charges that they easily secured bail. Thereafter, Sangh-BJP leaders welcomed and publicly felicitated these saffron goons, just as they had done earlier with the rapist-murderers in the Bilkis Bano case.
Are these issues—or the Bajrang Dal’s attack, sexual harassment and subsequent jailing of two nuns and Adivasi girls in Narayanpur, or the brutal lynching of three Muslim youths in Arang on false charges of cow smuggling, who have still not received justice—not issues worthy of protest by cultural activists? Across Chhattisgarh, the poison of hatred and division has been spread so thoroughly that forces of resistance, and those most crushed under the bulldozer of Sanghi Manuvadi fascism—Dalits, the oppressed, Adivasi women, minorities, students, youth, employees, intellectuals, farmers, workers and the common people—are being forced either to remain divided or to live under a shadow of fear.
In our view, the test of progressiveness is not merely reading one’s works from a stage, releasing books, or being honoured at literary events patronised and run by a fascist double-engine government. The social commitment of truly people-oriented writers is not “art for art’s sake,” but art for the people. Only such socially committed writers earn the genuine respect of the masses. In 2015, when many eminent writers returned their Sahitya Akademi Awards in protest against the intolerance created by Sanghi Manuvadi fascist forces and the murders of Professor Kalburgi and Comrade Govind Pansare by saffron mobs, the entire country witnessed with amazement the unity and resistance of truly patriotic and socially committed creators. That resistance shook the Sanghi Manuvadi fascist forces and deeply unsettled them.
We, comrades of the Revolutionary Cultural Forum, stand firmly opposed to the Raipur Literature Festival and the authoritarian Sanghi Vice-Chancellor of Bilaspur Central University, and stand in complete solidarity with writer Manoj Rupda. At the same time, we appeal to all progressive cultural activists and creators to strongly oppose the intense intolerance, communal fanaticism, and fascist designs aimed at crushing freedom of expression that have been unleashed by saffron gangs in Chhattisgarh. Let us build a collective cultural resistance and link these issues with the opposition to the Raipur Literature Festival. Only then will the right message reach the people of the state and the country.
The tagline of the Raipur Literature Festival claims: “This is not just a platform, but a new beginning of ideas.” Against this, we must raise a united cultural resistance and assert that we do not want the violent ideology of Hindutva. We do not want a literature festival that destroys pluralist traditions and promotes the poisonous slogan of “Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan.” We take pride in the shared sacrifices and shared heritage of the anti-British freedom struggle, and in the Ganga-Jamuni cultural tradition shaped by writers like Sajjad Zaheer, Munshi Premchand, Faiz, Sukanta Bhattacharya, Amrita Pritam, Gursharan Singh, Cherabanda Raju, Mahasweta Devi and Avtar Singh Pash.
Let us come forward to oppose intolerance, communal extremism and the suppression of freedom of expression, and together raise our voices against the Sangh-driven Raipur Literature Festival.
Tuhin Deb, Asim Giri
All India Convenors
Revolutionary Cultural Forum (RCF)
15 January 2026
