By Ananya S Guha
What purpose do Literary Festivals serve? I know this is a tongue-in-cheek question and it is also not because of sour – grapes that I question.
Or let me interrogate in this manner: is it the objective of literary festivals to unearth talent and to give some uninitiated the opportunity for exposure and to read out their work? Or is it not? Is it only to call the celebrated writer for a jumboree to ensconse himself / in a plush hotel and then go out for sightseeing after the reading is over? What is the rationale for calling celebrities with ostentation, when the reckoning should be to discover talent?
What did the Jaipur Literary Festival this year achieve; bad blood, polemics of the worst type and a vitiated environment? There was a lot of bravado with three or four adamantine authors insisting on a dare devilry by reading our excerpts from an impugned book. What did it achieve? Where do we draw the line between supposed blasphemy and literary merit? What do we get by hurting sentiments of community or race?
My point is that if Literary Festivals are a white elephant then how also does a common man genuinely interested in Literature benefit? Do we expect him to travel all the way from the North of the country to the South and vice versa to attend it?
Literary Festivals must be dialectics between the old and the new, to tap creative talent, not to further expose the already exposed.
In this age of technology interaction with renowned authors can easily take place through audio / video conference, and open source technology, at the same time giving a chance to younger writers to display their talent. This will lead to a proliferation and flowering of creativity in the country.
Some Private Organisations such as the Chennai based Prakriti are doing this silently year after year without much ado, while at the same time knowing quite clearly their objectives.
Literary coteries must go. They spout jealousy and arrogance of the worst kind. They bring in their wake a biased class system, a movement geared towards the already privileged. If it is not Jaipur it is Bhutan Everywhere the patronage is Royal. But what should a literary group do? Is it not to promote talent in a transparent and compromising manner? Had it not been for P. Lal many Indian writers would not have seen the light of the day, especially those writing in English, including such luminaries as Vikram Seth. Most of them seem to have forgotten this.
So let Literary Festivals be the breeding ground of the neophyte and not the acolyte.