Additional Commissioner of Police Biju George Joseph said the organisers were asked to remain in the city as a probe is going on against sociologist Nandy for his comments that people belonging to OBCs, SCs and STs were the most corrupt, remarks over which he has expressed regrets.
Festival Producer Roy said, "I have signed the papers on behalf of the JLF team to comply with the orders."
An FIR was lodged against Nandy and Roy last Saturday by Rajpal Meena, Chairperson of the SC/ST Rajasthan Manch, after Nandy stoked a controversy with his comments.
However, Nandy got some backing from various quarters. Interestingly Dalit author Kancha Ilaiah, said it was "a bad statement with good intentions".
"Prof Ashis Nandy made a bad statement with good intentions, however, as far as I know he was never against reservation. The controversy should end here," Ilaiah said in a statement here.
He said he would fight Nandy if he did not speak against corruption by the upper castes.
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Directors of the event Namita Gokhale and William Dalrymple appealed to the people to defend the freedom of speech and expression while vowing to keep the festival going.
"I really hope people will rally around to defend the festival," said Dalrymple. "We will fight to keep it open. We will fight to make sure this forum remains...We are terribly proud of what we have done," he added.
The five-day festival had run into controversies last year first over the visit of author Salman Rushdie, which eventually did not materialize and then due to reading from his banned book "Satanic Verses" by few authors, including Jeet Thayil.
Even before the festival began, there were protests against the inclusion of Thayil, who went on to bag the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and thus earn the ire of some organisations. However, no untoward incident happened.
Then there were the right-wingers who demanded the exclusion of authors from Pakistan who were scheduled to attend the festival. This after the straining of bilateral ties between the two neighbours when two Indian soldiers were killed in the first week of January at the LOC.
Though Pakistani author Mohammad Hanif could not make it to the festival due to personal reasons, other authors like Jamil Ahmad and M A Farooqui did mark their presence.
Battling controversies as well as a 1.5 crore shortfall in the budget, the festival managed to attract record crowds, with the footfall going from 120,000 last year to nearly 200,000 this year. MORE