Being Afro-Asian

LITERATURE

Writers from Asia and Africa prepare to get into a huddle at Neemrana.

It is now almost 50 years since the Bandung Conference held in Indonesia, and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) is marking the anniversary with a literary conference at Neemrana on 17 February, 2006. The idea is to get Asian and African writers discussing such issues as "burdens of identity" and "cultural assymetry".

As far as masters of the written word go, ICCR has an impressive line-up, including Gulzar, Javed Akhtar, Indira Goswami, Urvashi Butalia, Feryal Ali Gauhar, Ashis Nandy, Lindsey Collen and others.

Says Pavan K Varma, author of Being Indian, and also a member of the organising committee: "We wanted writers who were successful in their areas of writing and whose voices could be heard."

The participants, says Varma, are acknowledged voices on legacy, identity and assertion: the theme.

"We are the heirs to a rich cultural legacy and we need to find a true identity to it," says Varma, by way of elaboration of the theme, "And after doing that, there is a need to assert the identity globally." The conference, he hopes, will generate ideas and thoughts that are not country specific.