Literary festivals have become a major movement all across India and the subcontinent and it all started with the Jaipur Literature Festival, said William Dalrymple, launching the 17th edition together with Sanjoy K. Roy and Namita Gokhale in Jaipur on Thursday. The success of literary festivals in India – and the subcontinent -- is largely because there’s a rich, oral tradition and literature is just not read, but performed in public, he said.
The Jaipur festival is a moveable feast with music, colourful art, a bazaar, bookshops, food and, of course, conversations around books, reading, publishing and all its challenges. Namita Gokhale said the festival was bringing back the spirit of the ‘katha-sarit-sagara’ or the ‘sea of stories’, committing itself to the “rich diversity of our heritage”, and also trying to make sense of the times.
Stories were aplenty with subsequent sessions talking about Gaza and war, territory and identity, borders and Partition, gender, feminism; there was a spotlight on the coasts and marshy lands, music and poetry.
