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Award for woman playwright
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Saroop Dhruv has received the 2008 Hellman/Hammett Award for resisting State censorship in Gujarat.
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Quiet courage: Saroop Dhruv.
Saroop Dhruv, the Gujarati playwright, poet and social activist, has received the 2008 Hellman/Hammett Award for courageous writing by Human Rights Watch. She is a member of Women’s WORLD (India), a national network of over 200 women writers de
aling with censorship. This is a part of an international free speech network, Women’s WORLD (International) which had nominated her for this award.
Commendable work
Saroop Dhruv has been recognised for resisting censorship by the State governments in Gujarat (both Congress and the BJP) for her plays including “Suno! Nadi Kya Kahati Hai” (Listen to the Stream) (2004), “Jiva no Adhikar” (Right to Live) (1985), and “Raj-Parivartan” (Regime Change) (1987), and her work with victims of communal and other violence and the socially disadvantaged and oppressed —Dalits, adivasis, and women.
She is involved in popular street theatre and since the Gujarat pogrom of 2002, has been particularly active in protesting against communalism. She has to her credit four collections of verse in Gujarati including Hastakshep (Intervention), many street plays and a play, “Dilma Chhe Ek Ash” (A Hope in My Heart), with Hiren Gandhi. She lives and works in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
Human Rights Watch distributes funds from American playwright Lillian Hellman’s estate to writers of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, anywhere in the world, who are in financial need due to political persecution. Eight distinguished authors and editors form a selection committee to choose the Hellman/Hammett award recipients. By highlighting individual cases, these awards help focus attention on repression and censorship around the world. Hellman and her companion, the novelist Dashiell Hammett, were both interrogated about their political beliefs and suffered professionally during the anti-communist paranoia of the McCarthy years in the United States after World War II. Her bequest has helped more than 500 writers from 88 countries.
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