SAHMAT
8, Vithalbhai Patel House, Rafi Marg
New Delhi-110001
Telephone-23711276/ 23351424
e-mail-sahmat(at)vsnl.com
Date-11-03-08
PRESS STATEMENT
We the following academics, artists and concerned citizens strongly condemn the attack on the night of 10th March 2008 by miscreants led by R.S.S and B.J.P on Sundarayya Vignana Kendram in Hyderabad. These miscreants tried to burn the portrait of Putchalapalli Sundarayya and the thousands of books housed in the Kendram. They also attacked the staff that resisted the burning of the Kendram.
The Sundarayya Vignana Kendram, a renowned library, cultural and research centre has been striving for the last two decades in preserving the composite cultural heritage of the Indian civilization. It has the largest and rare collections of Telugu, English and Urdu books as also journals and manuscripts. It’s involvement in community service is enormous. It’s service to the global community of scholars in facilitating research into Indian history, culture and heritage is well acknowledged.
The attack on such a renowned cultural centre is totally unacceptable. It is against all norms of civil society. We are concerned with the increasing acts of cultural policing and fascist attacks and call upon the civil society to reject the politics of intolerance, hate and vandalism.
Teesta Setalvad
Javed Anand
Ruchira Gupta
Anurag Chaturvedi
Madan gopal Singh
Amar Farooqui
Arjun Dev
Archana Prasad
Mihir Bhattacharya
N.K.Sharma
Prabhat Patnaik
Utsa Patnaik
Jayati Gosh
Badri Raina
D N Jha
C P Chandrasekhar
Prabir Purkayasta
Chanchal Chohan
Aditya Mukherjee
Madhu Prasad
Indira Chandrasekhar
M.M.P. Singh
Irfan Habib
Shireen Moosvi
Amit Sengupta
Dinesh Abrol
M K Raina
Vikas Rawal
Ram Rahman
Sesha Reddy
Javeed Alam
Manjari Katju
Atlury Murali
Shasheej Hegde
D.Narasimha Reddy
Gali Arunkumar
G. Sudarshan Reddy
Purendra Prasad
K. Chakradhara Rao
Pillalamarri Ramulu
K. Balagopal
G. Haragopal
Kodandarami Reddy
L. Pratap Reddy
Aribandi Prasad Rao
K. Chinnaya Suri
N. Venugopal Rao
K.N. Panikkar
Malini Bhattacharya
Parthiv Shah
Sohail Hashmi