over the past few weeks the bangalore literature festival and more specifically one of its key organizers writer vikram sampath was the subject of many discussions vikrams stance on the award wapsi row and tipu sultan birth anniversary celebrations had led to some invitees reconsidering taking part in the event and leading to an invitation wapsi spree this resulted in vikram issuing a long media statement about how he stands by his views but that he would step down an excerpt of it reads i now find this distressing scenario where my personal freedom of expression is coming in the way of the festival without getting into the finer details of nuance or metaphorical descriptions my articles have been torn out of context and conclusions reached hastily names and labels have been attached carelessly without any evaluation of my past track record or body of work i stand by my articles written in the past i am not apologetic about them in any manner and will continue to cherish the freedom that my country gives me to air my opinion fearlessly however in the interest of the organization that i founded and nurtured which is now being linked to my personal views and targetted i have taken the painful decision of stepping away from all responsibility of organizing the festival given that the literature festival has been given a political spin we spoke to some creative minds on their views andaleeb wajid writer its unfortunate to see what has happened and it is ironic that a lit fest is embroiled in this whole thing something like a literature festival should be left untouched i have been at this event for all the editions and was a participant last year ive known vikram sampath long before this festival and i find this entire incident very sad and i voice my support for him coining terms like invitation wapsi and all this drama with no real intention seems gimmicky shashi deshpande writer i dont know what to make of it he has stepped down but i hope the festival will go on unfortunately everything is political these days i only hope the festival will cater to literature and nothing else madhu nataraj kiran danseuse ive been a part of two editions one to moderate a session and the other to launch a book to organize and mount a festival of this magnitude is a thankless job and instead of helping one sustain this initiative people are running the person down there is this entire tirade against vikram for an article he wrote on why he wouldnt return his award this was just his view and it was written a while ago i dont understand the necessity of bringing it up now and turning down invitations to a literature festival events like this are all about freedom of expression i strongly condole the fact that someone like vikram who was one of the people responsible for the festival has had to step down