JLF 2020: Adventures with the elephant in the room
For this year’s Jaipur Literature Festival -- it’s 13th edition, which saw around 4,50,000 visitors and 500 speakers -- there was no elephant in the room as such. The controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, and the politics and protests surrounding it, were discussed, debated or at least alluded to in numerous sessions. Protest slogans chanted on the streets found their way into panel discussions, as did trigger words and phrases like “bhakt”, “tukde tukde gang” and “kapdo se pehchanenge”. So common was it to see speakers and audience members spontaneously indulge in sloganeering that it stopped feeling truly rebellious after the first day.
The anti-CAA sentiment permeated sessions both likely and unlikely. Nandita Das spoke about not just Manto the author and playwright, but “the Manto in all of us”. “Kuch jail main hai, kuch ko maar diya, kuch protest kar rahe hai,” (some are in jail, some have been killed, some are protesting) she said, and joked that if Manto were alive today, he’d be asked to show his papers. In a session on Faiz and Firaq’s poetry, intellectual discourse was punctuated by ghazal performances of the poems, giving JLF 2020 one of its most poignant moments – when Faiz’s Hum Dekhenge, which has become an anthem of the protest movement – was performed.
Because of all the talk, it was disappointing to discover that a group of young protestors were roughly expelled from the premises, and detained for close to five hours, after they chanted antiCAA slogans. It was even more disappointing that, the next day, not even a handful of authors took a stand against the treatment meted out to the youngsters. “We just wanted a safe space to express ourselves,” said one of the protestors. “In an instant, we were made to feel unsafe.”
Then there were those who found the anti-establishment sentiment problematic. An audience member, a professor of communication skills, felt the panels lacked diversity of opinion. “At a literathe ture fest, there should be room for all kinds of opinions to be heard. And it should be left to the audience to pick the ones they want,” she said. A sliver of diversity shone through some sessions, like the one centred around the book, Eyes Right: Awakening Bharat Mata, which saw the author of the book, Swapan Dasgupta, explore the evolution of right-wing thought in India, question stereotypes ascribed to the growing faction, and highlight why a true democracy must not dismiss conservatism. There were light moments too, like when author exchanged banter that masked stinging jibes with fellow-panelist and ideological opponent Saba Naqvi. Such witty repartee also marked a session that saw journalist Rajdeep Sardesai and politician Sachin Pilot discuss all that is hampering India’s democratic spirit. After lampooning the ruling party for playing divisive politics, and the Congress for not striving hard enough to be a worthy opposition, Sardesai turned his attention to his own profession. “Do not watch news channels, it’s injurious to health,” he said.
Suketu Mehta launched his session with a tongue-in-cheek speech extolling the true Gujarati ethos – that of being tolerant, hospitable and pragmatic, and called out some Gujaratis for giving the community a bad reputation.
But there was room for topics other than politics. Krishna Ramanujan and Guillermo Rodriguez invited the audience to discover some of poet, AK Ramanujan’s captivating diary entries, like the one he wrote after he found out his wife had read his diary, or the one he penned when high on a hallucinogen.
Nobel laureate, Abhijit Banerjee shed light on Randomized Controlled Trials and how they can help alleviate problems plaguing society. Franco-Moroccan author, Leila Slimani spoke about the Me Too movement, and what’s next. “We didn’t do enough for the movement. I’m a feminist because I want my son to be free; I want him to live in a world where women are not afraid of him. The big question we should be asking ourselves is how we’re going to redefine the idea of masculinity and virility,” she said.
The closing debate sought to investigate the culprit dividing society (no it’s not a person, but social media). The debate was lively. While both sides acknowledged that the medium is sinister, what with IT cells and elaborate algorithms controlling discourse on it, those using the medium weren’t let off the hook. “We’re all accountable for fake news. Question your own self, your own tendencies,” said Mihir Sharma, while Makarand Paranjape urged the audience to be “united in our wariness about social media’s divisiveness.”