Tag Archive for 'Jaipur Literature Festival'

India’s groupthink on Islam

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s talk at the Jaipur Literature Festival shows how globalization is changing the debate. Sadanand Dhume, the author of “My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with a Radical Islamist” (Skyhorse Publishing, 2009), in the Wall Street Journal. Dhume is writing a nonfiction book on the impact of globalization on India.

Speaking to a packed hall, with her burly bodyguard unobtrusively off-stage, Ms. Hirsi Ali spoke about Islam—and its problems with individualism, women’s rights and sexuality—with a frankness unfamiliar to most Indians. She described the faith she was born into as “a dangerous, totalitarian ideology masquerading as a religion.” She argued against the moral relativism that has prevented Western intellectuals from scrutinizing Islam as they do Christianity and Judaism. She asked why it seemed impossible to have a sober discussion about the Koran and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad without riling Muslim sentiment, and made the case for bringing the Enlightenment to the blighted lands of the Middle East and Muslim South Asia. Ms. Hirsi Ali touched upon India only briefly, to contrast the country’s success with the dismal state of neighboring Muslim-majority Pakistan. More:

Literary magic

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Niall Ferguson, Stephen Frears, and Wole Soyinka kick off the fifth annual Jaipur Literature Festival. Olivia Cole reports for The Daily Beast

For over a hundred years, Jaipur, the so-called “Pink City,” was famously gray. It was only in 1882 that it was painted pink (the traditional color of welcome) in honor of a visit by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort. That sense of hospitality is apt for its literary festival, opening today. Now in its fifth year, from the start the philosophy has always been that it should welcome as many readers as possible. Some 20,000 are expected, but this is not a place with green rooms, wrist bands, or VIP areas, despite the fact that this year’s lineup is just a few starry names shy of a large constellation. more

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the wildcard draw at the Jaipur Lit Fest

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Posted by Namita Bhandare from the Jaipur Literature Festival:

Her name was never on the official programme issued by the Jaipur Literature Festival, but Ayaan Hirsi Ali, often described as Europe’s most controversial politician finally managed to  get her visa to attend the fest only at the last minute. Despite her quiet, unpublicised entry, she drew packed crowds when she spoke to Shoma Chaudhury of Tehelka on Islam and her journey towards becoming an infidel.

The author of The Caged Virgin and Infidel spoke about how the Koran is viewed by Islamic believers as a complete book and how the Prophet is infallible. “Every discussion that is even slightly critical of the Koran leads to the accusation that the discussion is a sin, that you are an infidel,” Ali told the audience at the Diggi Palace Durbar Hall, venue of the Jaipur Literature Festival. “Islam is exempted from the kind of systematic scrutiny that, say, Christianity, is subjected to.”

Ali is a prominent critic of Islam and her screenplay for the Theo Van Gogh movie Submission led to death threats and to Van Gogh’s eventual assassination. The Somalia-born author, activist and feminist has been living under tight security in Washington, where she is a fellow with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, since.

Unlike other religions that allowed for criticism, Islam brooks no questioning, Ali said. “In Islam you submit your will to a force outside yourself, to a collective will,” she said. Describing the Koran as a book written within a certain cultural context in the 6th century, she said many values are outdated. For instance, she said, in Islam, men and women are not equal, homosexual relations are not tolerated, women found guilty of adultery are required to be stoned to death, and the list of obligations under Islam have led to an environment of bigotry where believers are obliged to distance themselves from non-Muslims.

Hirsi disputed the idea that Islam is under seige. “The idea that Islam is under seige is an Islamic idea. In the name of Islam you have many organised groups and states committing violence and terrorism,” she said. “Islam in this context is a danger to global peace.”

Also read in The Indian Express: ‘When fundamentalists run out of arguments, they call you an infidel’

“It is important to off-set Islamic values with Western values. In Islam, men and women are not equal, a woman’s testimony is worth half of a man’s, and homosexuality is not acceptable. Is there a way to have a discussion with Muslim fundamentalists about Islam without offending them? No,” says Ali, who feels that Islam needs to go through the same “enlightenment” process that other religions have gone though.

Come ye all to Asia’s biggest literature fest

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on January 21, 2010
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William Dalrymple, Co-director, Jaipur Literature Festival, in the Hindustan Times:

In January in 2004, I was invited to give a reading in Jaipur at a new festival of music and dance that had just started in the Pink City. The reading took place in a small room at the back of the university. No one was able to find it and the event was sparsely attended —maybe 30 people, largely elderly aunties, turned up to hear it.

That evening, I suggested to the organiser, Faith Singh, that maybe something could be done to start a small literary festival around her Jaipur Heritage Festival, just as Edinburgh had its Book Festival running alongside the main Edinburgh International Festival.

Two years later, the festival finally kicked off with 18 authors. All were Indian-residents, “and two failed to show up,” remembers my co-director, Namita Gokhale, who has done more than anyone else to make that idea a reality. More:

Back with a bang: Jaipur Lit Fest

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Posted by Namita Bhandare

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any bigger, the DS Jaipur Literature Fesival is back with Season V (Jan 21-25), with more international writers, more Indian writers and certainly a bigger anticipated audience than previous years.

Writers who’ve confirmed attendance include Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle and Amit Chaudhuri, widely regarded as India’s best-known writer of his generation.

To pretend that there is a hierarchy or even a social pecking order at the fest would be misleading. There are no tickets; entry is free to all. Everybody queues up for lunch and dinner — everybody including Salman (Rushdie), Pico (Iyer) and Vikram (Seth). Writers and readers lounge in the winter sun, signing books, drinking coffee and gossiping (oh, the gossip).

The Lit Fest is the baby of writers William Dalrymple and Namita Gokhale. Writing for The Guardian recently, Dalrymple said: “Wherever I appeared at literary festivals around the globe, all the usual celebrated Indian writers were there – everywhere, that is, except India.” 

And so, began India’s quest for a fest. Starting with 17 writers over three days, the fest will this year include 160 writers and performers. [See the complete programme and list of writers attending here.]

This year’s festival is set once again in the charming, heritage Diggi Palace, the haveli of the Thakurs of Diggi, a small princely state. The Durbar Hall with its Venetian mirrors and framed portraits of venerated gods and ancestors seats about 300. Over the years, however, as the number of writers descending on Jaipur has gone up, Diggi Palace has sprouted new venues. There’s the Mughal Tent (which seats about 100 people), Baithak (about 75) and the front lawn (can easily take upwards of 1,000).

It was at the front lawn, last year where Vikas Swarup received news that Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle’s film based on his book Q&A had received 11 Oscar nominations. The crowd erupted in a roar as Swarup made his hasty departure for the film’s Mumbai premiere. Jai Ho.

Every fest has its own little gem, its highlights: Salman Rushdie ticking off ‘hostile’ journalists for what he saw as unfriendly reports in the press. Vikram Seth getting ticked off by a local newspaper for sipping a glass of wine while speaking to his moderator Sonia Faleiro.

This year’s showstopper could well be a controversial, woman writer and thinker. Her name is not up on the official programme yet, because she is yet to get a visa. But, do watch this space. If she comes, fireworks.

Previously on AW

The greatest literary show on earth

Slumdog glory

Rough Guide to the Fest

Once I wanted to live and die in India. Not now

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Ian Jack in The Guardian:

India’s hunger for the English language is manifested in the names of its schools. In Jaipur, the chief city of Rajasthan, under the letter B alone you can find the Blue Bells school, the Blue Birds school and the Bo-Peep school. Some don’t sound so salubrious: the address of the Modern Happy school is listed as “Behind Petrol Pump, Gapalpura Model Tank Road”. Many of them are likely to have been inspired more by profit than by educational ideals, their innocent nursery names disguising black-hearted entrepreneurs making a quick buck from Hindi-speaking parents who are anxious to promote their children into better jobs via familiarity with the world’s most powerful language. It is easy to imagine an Indian variant of the kind of school satirised by Dickens and Waugh – schools born out of similar middle-class ambitions – in which a poorly-paid Miss Gupta chants the class through Wordsworth’s Daffodils while dreaming in their inward eye of a couch in Bollywood rather than Windermere.

The one I visited in Jaipur last month, however, seemed a model of commitment. This was the Step by Step school, one of a chain of fee-paying English-schools in north India, and I’d been invited to talk to the pupils about “journalism, your life, those kinds of things”.

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The greatest literary show on earth

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The annual Jaipur Literature Festival might have met with lukewarm coverage by the Indian press, but the world press goes ga-ga.  Amulya Gopalakrishnan writes for Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast, calling it with considerable hyperbold the ‘greatest literary show’ on earth.  Brown was also one of the speakers at Jaipur.

gopalakrishnan-jaipurEvery January, the ancient city of Jaipur, India, celebrates the written word in a literary festival co-founded by Indian writer Namita Gokhale and William Dalrymple, the British travel writer and historian, that easily places first in Asia for cultural cachet and star power. It’s hard to believe that the festival is only three years old, given the crackle and buzz around its events and personalities—Salman Rushdie chose the occasion for his first public appearance after the fatwa. And this year too, through five sun-drenched mornings and vivid, musical evenings in the dignified old Diggi Palace, the festival made headlines across India.

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And Jeremy Kahn in the International Herald Tribune  says the fest has grown from a small, regional affair to one of international stature

In India’s headlong rush into modernity, Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, is hardly on the cutting edge. A fixture on the tourist circuit, it is best known for its pink-walled old city, its 18th-century Maharashtra’s forts and havelis, its classic jewelry and its traditional, technicolor patchwork textiles. But for a few days each January, this city lays claim to a place at the heart of the contemporary literary world.

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Slumdog glory. But where is the author?

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on January 22, 2009
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Posted by Namita Bhandare from the Jaipur Literature Festival.

Spot the author

Spot the author

On the day that Danny Boyle, A.R. Rahman, Anil Kapoor and the cast of Slumdog Millionaire lit up the red carpet in the film’s Mumbai premiere on Thursday, January 22, one man without whom the film wouldn’t have existed was airdashing from Jaipur to make it just in time to get news of the film’s stupendous 10 Oscar nominations. It was Vikas Swarup who wrote Q&A, the book on which the film is based.

Swarup was clearly the star of the Jaipur Literature Festival’s first day’s events as a line of school children and other fans queued up to get a copy of their book signed by the diplomat-author. On the day the Oscar nominations were announced, Swarup slipped away to make it to the Mumbai premiere, although festival organisers said he was expected to return to Jaipur. Back in Jaipur it was another star associated with the film, lyricist Gulzar who basked in the glory of the announcement as champagne was popped and the audience broke into huge applause.

Swarup is chuffed about the film based on his novel reaping such huge dividends in the awards circuit (it won four Golden Globes, picked up 11 BAFTA nominations and has now received 10 Oscar nominations, including one for Simon Beaufoy for best screenplay adaptation). But he told author William Dalrymple, festival director with whom he had an hour long public interaction, that he had not been invited to the London premiere and finally had to buy his own ticket from Pretoria in South Africa where he is posted to London. “People kept asking me what I thought about the film and I hadn’t even seen it. So, I finally decided to buy my own ticket.”

Swarup seemed reconciled to the many changes and departures from his book in the film, although he said that the first draft of the screenplay had certain inaccuracies which he then had to fix. “However, the author becomes obselete once the film-makers come into play,” he said.

In Swarup’s book, the protagonist is named Ram Mohammed Thomas, a name changed to Jamaal Malik in the film. Salim in the book is not Jamaal’s brother but rather a street-smart friend. Even the title Q&A — which has a certain iconic ring to it, as pointed out by Dalrymple – was changed. Swarup defended the change saying that Slumdog Millionaire had a certain evocative quality. Moreover, he conceded that Beaufoy has been ‘faithful to the central premise in the book’.

But there were others in Jaipur who felt that Swarup ought to have been given more importance at the premiere and award ceremonies of Slumdog. “It’s a bit sloppy on the film-makers’ part to have left him out. I can only hope that it is an oversight,” said an admirer who didn’t wish to be named.

Swarup also brushed off criticism — most notably from Amitabh Bachchan — that Slumdog is too negative in its portrayal of a seamy underbelly of Mumbai. “India is so large and multifarious that a single book cannot represent the whole reality. It is at best only a slice of Indian life; not the only version of it,” he told Dalrymple.

Slumdog was to have premiered in Jaipur as part of the literature festival on Wednesday January 21, a day before the Mumbai premiere. The festival’s official programme lists the premiere in the presence of Vikas Swarup and Anil Kapoor, the film’s most recognisable Indian star. But the organisers announced that the premiere had been postponed to January 23 — and gave no reason for the decision.

Ironically, the copies of Q&A available at the festival venue (and the copies that Swarup signed in Jaipur) had a still from Slumdog the movie prominently displayed on the front jacket and was being sold as Slumdog Millionaire, the book previously known as Q&A! So, Slumdog could end up pushing the sales of his book. Don’t be surprised if he ends up having the last laugh. 

See reviews of Slumdog Millionaire in the Indian press here, here and here.

Bachchan, Slumdog & more: a rough guide to the Jaipur Lit Fest

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Posted by Namita Bhandare:

I know the organisers of the Jaipur Literature Festival (Diggi Palace hotel, Jaipur, January 21-25, entry free to all) love to say that the festival is democratic and that they don’t want to pitch one session over and above the others but here’s what I think will be the star events at the Lit Fest:

1. The Indian premiere of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. That the film has reaped awards at the Golden Globe and is tipped to be an Oscar favourite has only added to the curiosity factor. And now that Amitabh Bachchan has blasted the film for daring to show the ‘murky under belly’ of Mumbai (has he taken over from where Raj Thackeray left off?), the pre-publicity hype has just got a notch hotter. As they say in showbiz, any publicity is good publicity. Anyway, to come back to the film: present at the premiere will be, no not Danny Boyle (he’ll be in Mumbai) but Vikas Swarup who wrote Q&A, the book on which the script is based, and also, apparently, Anil Kapoor. I’m a bit alarmed by the filmi flourishes which the festival’s PR guides seem to favour (they roped Aamir Khan in last year), but I guess they’re doing it because they believe it sells the festival. If you ask me, the festival (now in its fourth year) doesn’t need much selling. Continue reading ‘Bachchan, Slumdog & more: a rough guide to the Jaipur Lit Fest’

Writes of passage

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Namita Bhandare in the Hindustan Times questions the wisdom of film star Aamir Khan’s presence as a delegate at the Jaipur Literature Festival 

I yield to nobody in my regard for Aamir Khan as a fundamentally decent human being. I doff my (metaphorical) hat at his courage to follow his politics and I applaud from my heart at Taare Zameen Par (TZP) as a sensitive, socially-relevant film that every parent, teacher and thinking adult should watch.

Yet, even I have to question the wisdom of Khan’s opting to attend the Jaipur Literature Festival recently, not as a participant — because surely it was his right to attend an event that has free entry for all — but as a delegate.

Now Khan may be a fine actor and a sensitive director, but he’s no writer; not at least to the best of anyone’s knowledge although he does post occasionally on his blog. His conversation with Tehelka’s Shoma Chaudhury had little to do with books (though someone from the audience did ask what he had read in recent times) and more to do with films, particularly TZP. Quite clearly, even Shoma, a lit fest veteran, was aware of the awkwardness, beginning her conversation by wondering aloud what Aamir was doing at a festival that celebrates literature.

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Fatima Bhutto: I don’t want to be a political inheritor

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NewsPostIndia caught up with the charismatic Fatima Bhutto at the ongoing Jaipur Literature Festival 

The lines between the world of books and politics blurred once again Thursday when Fatima Bhutto, the 25-year-old niece of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, said she wanted to make her mark – but without the Bhutto tag.

The young author, who inherits the Bhutto legacy of politics from her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, her aunt Benazir and her father Murtaza all of whom died unnatural, brutal deaths, was the cynosure of attention at the ongoing Jaipur Literary Festival here.

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Romancing with literature and culture

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A grande dame and a man who can never grow old. Indrajit Hazra on day one of the Jaipur Lit Fest in the Hindustan Times.

dev-anand.jpgWHERE HAVE all the civilised gone? Nayantara Sahgal, resplendent at 80, received a standing ovation at the packed Diggi Palace hotel after she delivered the keynote address at the start of the third Jaipur Literature Festival.

Titled ‘Climate Change’, the author’s speech was (thankfully) not about greenhouse emissions, but about the current climate of change across the world in which cultural diversity is increasingly coming under threat either from religious quarters or from those hardselling globalisation. But it was her lament of people not listening and coming to terms with the ‘other voice’ today that left the Jaipur audience speechless.

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Vidal drops out of Jaipur Lit Fest. Political nieces, Fatima Bhutto and Nayantara Sahgal will attend

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An update on the Jaipur Lit Fest by Namita Bhandare

One day before the Jaipur Literature Festival kicks off at Diggi Palace, comes a press release that America’s most eminent man of letters, Gore Vidal will not be attending after all.

Vidal was slated for top billing and was scheduled for two interactions: one with NDTV’s Barkha Dutt on Saturday where he along with author and festival organiser William Dalrymple was to have spoken on The World Post 9/11. Vidal was also scheduled to have interacted with journalist Shoma Choudhury on Sunday on Life and Letters.

Continue reading ‘Vidal drops out of Jaipur Lit Fest. Political nieces, Fatima Bhutto and Nayantara Sahgal will attend’

Confidence and pride beyond political class

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Indian self-confidence is despite and in spite of its political class writes Namita Bhandare in Mint
 Politicians aren’t known to be thin-skinned. Yet, even the thickest of this amazing breed must have noticed a serious image problem that just got worse this past one week.
In no particular order: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Maya memsaab had a birthday party—her own symbolic “let them eat cake” moment, with diamonds and a helicopter as gifts. Even as a shocked nation watched senior bureaucrats feed behenji her favourite cream cake in a spectacle of sycophancy came the news that one of New Delhi’s most awaited, and needed, expressways (to Gurgaon) was ready to roll but that the aam aadmi (common man) would have to wait.
The reason? No VIP was available to inaugurate this “very important road”. Despite a “people’s inauguration”, the expressway remains shut—it is now to be inaugurated by Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit and other significant politicians later this week.
Then there was the absolutely unedifying hullabaloo over the Bharat Ratna.

Vidal, McEwan to attend Jaipur Literature Festival

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New Kerala 

Jaipur is set for a literature festival which will see participation by Gore Vidal, Ian McEwan, among others

The pink city of Jaipur is set to host a five-day literature festival from Jan 23, with participation of famous writers including American novelists Gore Vidal and Donna Tartt and Booker Prize winning English novelist Ian McEwan. Continue reading ‘Vidal, McEwan to attend Jaipur Literature Festival’