Chetan Bhagat faces Twitter backlash over 'what do historians do' remark

New Delhi: Celebrated author Chetan Bhagat on Friday faced intense Twitter backlash following his controversial remarks on historians, who have come out strongly and protested against the Narendra Modi government over 'rising intolerance' and "highly vitiated atmosphere in the country.

Chetan Bhagat, known for making controversial statements, had posted a number of tweets, a day after 53 historians, including leading names like Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, KN Pannikar and Mridula Mukherjee, expressed serious concerns over recent developments in a joint statement released by 'Sahmat'.

"What do historians do? I am genuinely curious. This happened. Then this happened. Then this. Ok work done for the day," Bhagat had tweeted this morning.

On the issue of several writers returning their prestigious awards, Bhagat said, “Return your award. Go for it. But be clear what you are returning it for. Are Indians intolerant? Or is the govt intolerant?”

Earlier, at least 36 writers, including Nayantara Sahgal, Ashok Vajpeyi, Uday Prakash and K Veerabhadrappa, had returned their Sahitya Akademi awards, and five writers stepped down from official positions of the literary body, protesting against its "silence" over "rising intolerance".

The Akademi had yielded to the unrelenting protests by calling an emergency meet and issued a strong condemnation of the killing of Kannada writer MM Kalburgi and others while urging litterateurs to take back awards.

However, later clarifying his statements, Bhagat said, “I respect all who have returned awards and their views,just clarifying how I feel as a writer here,before foreign media reaches conclusions.”

Just as a gun incident in US doesn't make every American a gun toting murderer, a few unfortunate incidents don't make Indians intolerant.— Chetan Bhagat (@chetan_bhagat) October 30, 2015

It's called conviction. And by no means am I alone in my views here. https://t.co/5NLlII2hyi— Chetan Bhagat (@chetan_bhagat) October 30, 2015

In case it was not blatantly obvious that historian tweet was a joke. Made a million of them on writers and engineers before. Duh!— Chetan Bhagat (@chetan_bhagat) October 30, 2015

But what about the 4th standard ones? I write better than them? Really? Thank you!!! https://t.co/toAqMwuDQc— Chetan Bhagat (@chetan_bhagat) October 30, 2015