Mini JLFs sprouting throughout India. Lit fest increase in Nagpur, Ranchi, Kanpur, Indore, Kokrajhar
Jaipur Literature Pageant has been referred to as the Mahakumbh of literature, the greatest literary show on Earth, an enormous fats Punjabi wedding ceremony and a industrial networking occasion. It even received a brand-new worldwide version on the Eden-like white sand coast of Baa Atoll within the Maldives this summer season. As JLF went international, literature festivals in India are going native—past state capitals and metropolises to small aspirational cities like Mysuru, Panchkula, Jhansi, Gurgaon, Nagpur, Indore, Kishanganj, Noida, Meerut, Shimla, Kokrajhar, Puducherry, Pune, Madurai, Shillong, Itanagar, Jodhpur and Chandigarh.
As the ‘remainder of India’ turns into more and more modern, lit fests are additionally on the lookout for new frontiers. There are at least 65 lit fests in India now, a rising testomony to many years of neglect of smaller cities and regional languages, and big starvation for cultural occasions. The shift now coincides with the rise of small cities within the public consciousness, common tradition, politics and financial development.
“Versus bigger cities, the place individuals have a number of choices and going to a literary occasion is the very last thing an individual would need to do, individuals in tier-2 and tier-3 cities actively search them out. They’re extra critical in the case of literature. And so even the authors actually like to go to them,” says Apra Kuchhal, honorary convenor on the Prabha Khaitan Basis which helps literature festivals in Kanpur, Indore, Gujarat and Kolkata, amongst others.
Regional authors, native celebrities, film stars and cultural czars are most frequently the headliners of those occasions. Nagpur’s Orange Metropolis Literary Pageant has boasted the presence of journalist and author Vaibhav Purandare, actor Darshan Jariwala, late historian and theatre artist Balwant Moreshwar Purandare and meals vlogger Laksh Dadwani. In Panchkula, author and journalist Vani Kaushal, creator Milan Vohra, and even legendary photographer Raghu Rai have made an look. In the meantime, in Puducherry, house minister A.Namassivayam, Swarajya Journal editor Aravindan Neelakandan and author and authorities official Ma Venkatesan have been actively concerned year-on-year within the Union territory’s literary competition.
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India’s altering ‘litscape’
India’s big-ticket tryst with literary fests started solely about 20 years in the past. The Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP) authorities had decided it wanted to celebrate the Nobel Prize awarded to V. S. Naipaul (2002) within the historic historic city Neemrana, about 150 kilometres from Jaipur, town that has develop into synonymous with trendy India’s literary prowess.
However the ‘litscape’ has modified drastically for the reason that Worldwide Pageant of Indian Literature, hosted by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, introduced the likes of Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Nayantara Sahgal and Hanif Kureishi underneath one roof for the primary time.
However Jaipur Lit Fest, synonymous with Sanjoy Ghosh and Willian Dalrymple, is what welded books with glamour, literature with performative intellectualism.
After many editions of extravagant aptitude, the massive gala was scaled again this yr within the Maldives to have fun ‘gradual life’ by turning the thought of ‘up shut and private’ on its head, for a sum of solely $7,200—Rs 5.7 lakh. “India’s mushrooming literary festivals have 4 defining ‘fashions’ that kind their core—cash, egos, movie star and property,” in accordance with Sanjeev Chopra, director of the Valley of Phrases Worldwide Literary Pageant.
Overlook golden triangles or quadrilaterals, there’s a literary apeirogon rising throughout the subcontinent. However it’s all concerning the sum of its elements—and it’s wanted now greater than ever. With leaders internationally declaring a battle on levels that ‘don’t increase earning potential and employability,’ the duty of preserving tradition, arts and humanities weighs heavy on these festivals. It has develop into “as necessary as water is to a fish,” says Janhavi Prasada, festival director of Himalayan Echoes. “Literature makes us human; it creates a way of acceptance of the others’ phrase, considering, reflections, creativity and all of it filters all the way down to a way of freedom with duty.”
Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Goa, Kozhikode, Lucknow, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Dehradun, Thiruvananthapuram and Ahmedabad are simply a number of the main cities internet hosting a number of literary festivals in India. However others aren’t far behind. Srinagar, Bhopal, Patna and Ranchi have all had a lit fest underneath their belts too. Nonetheless, not all of them have sustained past their preliminary years or have, for the reason that Covid-19 pandemic, opted for an internet strategy.
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Valleys to coasts—fests with a spotlight
From Nainital’s ‘boutique’ Himalayan Echoes competition held at Abbotsford Heritage Resort to Insan college—once India’s model residential educational institution—which performs host to Seemanchal literary competition in Bihar’s border city of Kishanganj, lit fests are additionally highlighting the interlacing between cities and literature.
Other than the occasional huge identify, most panels comprise regional writers and people engaged within the cultural scene—names not essentially identified throughout India. This yr’s North-East Lit Fest in Arunachal Pradesh featured writers Upen Rabha Hakacham, Munish Singh and Bipul Regon, amongst others; and Himalayan Echoes turned a platform for writers like Tarana Khan, Aneel Bisht and Shekhar Pathak—who’ve now develop into regulars in lit fest circuits.
Not simply locations or writers, literary festivals are lending themselves to focus on the causes of marginalised communities and cultures as properly. Assam’s Kokrajhar Literary Pageant, as an example, celebrates the lived realities of ‘minor’ languages reminiscent of Rabha and Yerava. Equally, Delhi’s Jashn-e-Rekhta—the world’s largest Urdu language competition—is a celebration of Urdu by ghazals, Sufi concert events, ‘qawwali’ (Sufi devotional music) and ‘dastaangoi’(storytelling)
Yearly at Mumbai’s Nationwide Centre for Performing Arts, regional writers come collectively for an unique occasion meant just for them—The Gateway Litfest. The programme started in 2015, in response to the declining footprint of native writers featured in literary festivals. However others are nonetheless near their roots. Playwright Yash Vyas (Gamti Vaat) and translations of Pannalal Patel’s Jindagi Sanjeevani made their option to the Gujarat literary competition this yr. Final yr, the Gulmarg Lit Fest in Jammu and Kashmir did the same. Dogri, Pahari, Gojri and Punjabi authors and books had been the first focus. Dogri Sahitya Akademi Award winners Lalit Magotra, Sita Ram Sapolia and Darshan Darshi had been among the many audio system on the literary competition.
A number of faculty festivals additionally make an look within the must-attend literary competition ‘circuits’ of the nation. Not too long ago, the cancellation of Aligarh Muslim College’s literary competition turned the topic of political scrutiny. Delhi College’s Kirori Mal School has also been hosting a first-of-its-kind Dalit Literature Festival since 2019 for ‘a parallel, change-oriented literary discourse wherein Dalits, tribals, denotified tribes, ladies, minorities and pasmanda communities’ are the mainstays.
The Queer LitFest in Chennai, which started in 2018, was the primary of its sort to “carry collectively political and literary values of the works that play an necessary position within the lives of queer individuals…and create alternatives for queer writers, translators and artists who’re in any other case invisibilised or ignored in numerous literary platforms.” (the web site says that) Since then, the Awadh Queer Literature Festival in Lucknow and Rainbow Lit Fest in Delhi have additionally picked up the baton.
Literary festivals are additionally making setting and local weather the central focus of their occasion. “Himalayan Echoes is the one mountain competition in India that has ‘setting’ at its core. “That’s the reason I additionally name it the ‘setting competition’ of India,” says Prasada. In 2021, Bengaluru-based Green LitFest additionally emerged as a platform that hosted occasions and panel discussions completely on the topic.
Though most organisers deny that there are mainstream and various types of lit fests rising all through India, the emphasis on ‘high quality’ stays fixed. However reaching that’s typically akin to a tightrope stroll.
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Using the tide
“The primary couple of years is make-or-break for literary festivals,” Chopra explains, “it’s right here that it’s important to attain out to the communities and get as a lot help as doable. It helps when you’ve got a powerful board of administrators taking it ahead. However within the preliminary years, it’s all about reducing prices.”
Most Indian literary festivals depend on company sponsorships, venue companions and foundations for help. They typically have to have sustained their actions for at the very least 5 years earlier than they develop into eligible for financial schemes by the federal government and tax concessions. In 2019, Occasions Lit Fest Mumbai was cancelled and Chennai’s Hindu Lit for Life was indefinitely postponed due to a dearth of sponsors.
“Conserving languages and literature can’t be achieved alone,” says Apra Kuchhal, Honorary Convenor on the Prabha Khaitan Basis, which helps literature festivals in Kanpur, Indore, Gujarat and Kolkata, amongst others.
“Language is an index of tradition. If languages are preserved and guarded, the tradition’s protected. That is our goal. So, as a gaggle of like-minded individuals, foundations step ahead to collaborate and join—to seek out options to societal issues. Our basis believes in ‘scaling deeper’—to show goals like these into the society’s new regular,” she provides.
Even now, most huge literary festivals in India function at a break-even value, generally incurring losses. “Pandemic has worsened the state of affairs,” says author and literary marketing consultant Atul Ok Thakur, who’s on the board of main literary festivals in India and Nepal.
Shifting on-line has given a brand new lease of life to literary fests that confronted funds crunch and have expanded their viewers base. Publicity from podcasts, YouTube channels and social media pages has drawn extra firms into investing. “All of us went 100 per cent digital for the 2 years of the pandemic and that was an exquisite perception into the numbers sport. Absolutely, the outreach is phenomenal, however I might not commerce the bodily avatar of the competition for the digital world. A mixture of each is finest,” says Prasada.
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A blended bag
As a lot as literary festivals are a celebration of literature, they will additionally generally seem as a industrial train. A excessive variety of attendees doesn’t all the time imply that the occasion has been a hit, or that the hole between authors and readers has been bridged.
In an article in EPW, creator Jerry Pinto illustrates how generally panels are put collectively with out thought, the interplay between writers and viewers is banal and why publishers and brokers are lacking from the occasions. Writer Amrita Shah additionally factors out in a Scroll. in article that “during the last decade or so the carnivalesque, celebratory and spectacular strategy to concepts and literature has come to occupy a disproportionately dominant house in our lives.”
Typically, the periods are packed into tight schedules, and particular person ones are sometimes too temporary to convey an concept. “Disadvantage for extra introspective individuals like me is that you simply can not give attention to something or anybody particularly. It might probably develop into all hi-bye, selfie clicks and social media posts,” echoes creator Monideepa Sahu, who was a speaker on the Bangalore literature competition in 2018 and 2019.
Atul Ok Thakur, amongst different organisers, is cautious of the risk that diverging from literary targets poses. “The answer lies in bridging the hole between notion and actuality. Lit fests shouldn’t be misused as solely networking platforms for getting dangerous manuscripts revealed and run by PR networks,” he says. Nonetheless, Thakur provides, “not many gamers within the fray are making huge cash out of lit fests. Most of them are struggling heaps.”
Although cultural festivals emerged in Nineteen Eighties Europe as a response to the necessity to promote cities, the Roman “bread and circuses” staging of India’s literary festivals seems slightly totally different. Sure, there’s chai and charcha, however it’s primarily cities and communities battling it out for consideration, publicity, and sustenance. Whereas some have been capable of efficiently collect simply sufficient patrons to outlive, others just like the Kumaon literary competition—even when not on the similar scale as JLF—are leaving their properties and “travelling” to locations like Kashmir and Goa.
“Literature festivals have develop into the brand new trend present,” Apra Kuchhal says, “the issue with Gen-Z viewers is that lit fests have develop into a life-style for them. People who find themselves not even taken with literature flock to these occasions.”
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
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