New Delhi: The Jaipur Literary Fest (JLF) concluded today after a metaphorical feast for ideas. The three-day festival had speakers from different fields who presented their views on different topics and had a participation of more than a million people.
While the speakers varied from being historians to politicians to designers, what remains for the attendees is a sea of knowledge that can be explored more and more as one dives into the subject further.
Among other speakers, one was Saket Suman, the author of The Psychology of a Patriota book that presents a thought-provoking chronicle of India. During the panel discussion with Mukulika Banerjee, Suman said, “Liberty and Equality give patriotism its authority…Patriotism means different things to different people because, in our society, we have different standards of judging people.”
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“We must respect each other and believe that all are equal in our nation and all nations in the world are equal. When there is equality in and among all nations, there will be harmony on the planet. When there is harmony in the planet, patriotism will drive our zeal to find solutions to mankind’s gravest problems, to address inequality and give everybody the dignity of our shared evolution from apes to humans,” he added.
Suman further said, “Until then, patriotism will remain a sham, an invisible moral authority that prevents us from seeing that there are greater things at play, that there are deep states, the corporations and the powers that be, those that do not go away with the rise and fall of governments or uprisings of the people.”
At the JLF, another interesting session took place where Member of Parliament Mahua Moitra and former diplomat, politician, and author Pavan K. Varma were in conversation with media veteran & writer Sudha Sadanand in a session called Telling It Like It Is.
The session focused on the power of dissent in which Varma said, “…the greatest threat to democracy is the belief by a person or any set of people that they have a monopoly over the truth. That puts an end to dialogue and the possibility of civilised dissent which is so essential for a democracy.”
Moitra added, “…Majority is important for a democracy to function but… majoritarianism is against the very essence of democracy.” She emphasised that the space for dissent is reducing in the country and society can only progress if it uses dissent progressively.
Another interesting conversation that took place at one of the sessions was with historian and acclaimed writer Manu S. Pillai, author and historian Ira Mukhoty, and Member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram and bestselling author, Shashi Tharoor. Pillai talked about his new book, False Allies: India’s Maharajahs in the Age of Ravi Varma.
They talked about the history of Indian Maharajas. During the conversation, Pillai said that he calls maharajas false allies “because there were ways and means by which even the maharajahs actually resisted colonial influence”.
Meanwhile, Tharoor said about the book, “…this was worth writing, worth studying and there is indeed a great deal that happened in the princely states that we tend to overlook when we study the history of India.”
Other significant personalities in the festival included designer Manish Malhotra, writer Anirudh Kanisetti, the founder and publisher of Roli Books, Pramod Kapoor; officer-in-charge, the Naval History Project, Srikant B. Kesnur and former Managing Editor, India Today magazine, Sandeep Unnithan, historian and writer Marc David Baer who talked about the Ottoman empires, Director Arts, India, British Council, Jonathan Kennedy, and many others.
The session with kenned included Founder, ArtX Company, Rashmi Dhanwani; Managing Director of Teamwork Arts and Festival Producer, Sanjoy K. Roy, who were in conversation with scholar and founder of Kri Foundation, Arshiya Sethi, who was introduced by Barbara Wickham. They came together to discuss the deepening impact of Covid-19 on India’s creative economy.