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At the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), in 2015, the crowds have only grown. But the quality of the crowds is different – and there are changes, too, to the festival’s themes.
As usual, there are panels on art history, and on world history. India’s foremost art historian, B N Goswamy, held his audience spellbound with a description of the spirit of Indian painting, something he also examines at length in his recent book. Historian Jerry Brotton took a tour through history, economic development, and imperialism in a talk he titled “A history of the world in twelve maps”. There were poets, of course, and even the odd offbeat topic – for example, one about bees.
Still, the differences from the past were also noticed. JLF, it appears, is doing its best to adapt to the new dispensation – and to minimise controversy. The festival was opened by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje. Its main sponsor, of course, is Zee – whose promoter, Essel’s Subhash Chandra, is associated with the BJP.
In one combative session, two members of the National Institution for Transforming India Aayog, Arvind Panagariya and Bibek Debroy — both also members of Raje’s advisory council — took on journalist Om Thanvi in defence of Rajasthan’s turn to the right. A large painting that dominated the venue, and against which people took selfies, was titled ‘The Shiva of Varanasi’. The big star of the conference on Saturday was missile scientist and the man the BJP chose to be elected president, Abdul Kalam.
The closing debate was on ‘culture as politics’, and featured clashes on Hindutva and secularism. It featured long-time internet campaigner against ‘Western’ students of Indian culture, Rajiv Malhotra, who has long waged a battle on Twitter to be invited to the Festival, and has called Indians in attendance ‘sepoys’.
Several people noted even panels that seemed to be on topics unrelated to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s assumption of power wound up somehow being about the new government or recent events. Even one which featured exclusively Chinese writers, talked about Mao’s attacks on intellectuals. A question at historian Jenny Barlow’s session asked her about Vedic Science. (It was slapped down by the moderator, anti-pseudoscience campaigner Simon Singh.)
For that matter, even the fact that Rajnigandha pan masala was a major sponsor of a literary festival was considered a significant transition.
But the differences didn’t stop at the themes and the sponsors and Modi. The crowds seemed younger, with ever more schoolchildren.
This meant those who had written children’s books were mobbed the most – Sudha Murty’s reception was even more rapturous than Sonam Kapoor’s. (In case you are wondering what the Hindi film actress was doing at a literature festival, she has written a short story.) New York chef Vikas Khanna, celebrated for his cookbooks and Masterchef appearances, was feted mostly for his two books for children. The majority in his audience were young adolescent boys, unusual, as teenage Indian boys are not generally supposed to be interested in cooking.
This is not to say children’s concerns were childish. One young boy, who said he was in Class VIII, asked a question at a session dedicated to the Modi election about retrospective taxation. When quizzed by a moderator who suspected the question was planted by a teacher and the boy did not understand its import, the young questioner replied he was asking about retrospective taxation to gauge the Modi government’s attitude to reform.
Overall, many of the authors, especially those from foreign countries, expressed satisfaction on the numbers of young people thronging the sessions and buying books at the bookstore – this year taken over controversially and chaotically by Amazon, as part of its $2-billion push into India.
