Mr Sinha was chosen for a award for his play based mostly on the lifetime of Ashoka.
Patna:
A key aide of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday hit out in opposition to Sahitya Akademi Award winner Daya Prakash Sinha for likening Ashoka the Nice to Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb.
Upendra Kushwaha, a former Union minister who now heads the JD(U)’s parliamentary board, demanded that the award, introduced lately however but to be handed over to Mr Sinha, be withdrawn forthwith.
Mr Kushwaha additionally requested ally BJP to take motion in opposition to the Padma Shri awardee playwright who’s the nationwide convenor of the celebration’s cultural cell.
“He (Mr Sinha) has made a really foul comment about Samrat (emperor) Ashoka. He doesn’t deserve the award and the identical needs to be withdrawn. The celebration, of which he occurs to be an office-bearer, should additionally take motion if it desires to keep away from backlash,” stated Mr Kushwaha.
One of the intriguing historic characters of historic India, Ashoka, whose title is suffixed with “the Nice” by students the world over, was the grandson of Chandragupt Maurya who based the Maurya dynasty of Magadha.
Maurya, who was born in a household of poor shepherds and rose to turn out to be probably the most highly effective king of his occasions, has been a cult determine of types for the politically ascendant OBCs of Bihar.
Curiously, Mr Sinha has been chosen for the award for his play based mostly on the lifetime of Ashoka, who famously took up the trail of non-violence after a victory in opposition to the dominion of Kalinga in a blood-soaked battle stuffed him with regret.
The playwright has been within the eye of a storm following an interview he gave to a publication through which he made various uncharitable remarks about Ashoka, claiming that these had been based mostly on historic analysis.
Mr Sinha additionally noticed that Ashoka had “dedicated many sins” early on in his life and, later, tried to cover these behind a cloak of piety, very like Aurangzeb sought to do greater than a millennium later.
Notably, in contrast to Ashoka, hailed as a harbinger of pluralism and tolerance, Aurangzeb is usually reviled as a bigot who handled non-Muslims unfairly, fuelling uprisings that led to the decline of the mighty Mughal empire.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
