On the 13th of this month, the countdown to the world’s largest free literary festival, the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) started, with a curtain raiser to the event being held at the Taj Mahal Hotel. The tenth edition of the festival to be held from January 19 to 23 promises to be bigger and better than before. The curtain-raiser gave a glimpse of what to expect at JLF 2017 in the midst of lively performances by Harpreet, Parvathy Baul (bhakti singers) and a recitation of various Bhakti poems in translation by Arundhati Subramaniam.
JLF will be hosting 250 artists from across the world including Alan Hollinghurst, Richard Flanigan, Noviolet Bulawayo and Indian writers like Volga (Telugu), Vivek Shanbhag (Kannada), Radha Chakravarty (Bengali), Neerja Mattoo (Kashmiri) amongst several others. In an attempt to increase its outreach in the coming edition, 30 languages from India have been selected to represent Indian literature. The festival hopes to focus on the necessity of translation, the Constitution, Magna Carta, Sanskrit and the movement from the margins towards the centre.
Emphasising on the importance of literature, Namita Gokhale, writer, publisher and co-director of JLF said, “Literature is that force that links human stories and contemplates the human situation which we all need to do once in a while. In an increasingly parochial and polarised world, it is literature that helps us scale the walls and translation above all, is the tool that helps us access other cultures, other knowledge systems.”
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The co-director of the event, William Dalrymple highlighted the passion and hard work that goes on to make the festival possible. Stating that no writer is paid, he stated that the festival is fuelled by the love for literature.
“We have two missions in Jaipur. To bring the world to Jaipur and bring the great literature of India to the world.”
Remarking on the tradition of JLF, Sanjoy Roy, the Director of Teamwork Arts, producers of the festival, stated that it had managed to uphold the ideals that it started out with which was to create a platform for debate and discussion where people could choose which point of view appealed to them. “In India, there's great inequity and the aim of JLF has been to grant democratic access to literature.”
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At the event the pop-up of JLF at Melbourne in February was also announced which would celebrate the best of South Asian and Australian writing, supported by the Australian Council of Arts.