The advertisement for the Harud Literary Festival lists it as “Jammu & Kashmir’s first ever national literature festival”. There is a beautiful picture of autumn leaves and a house-boat next to this text: “The Valley of Kashmir will resonate with the sound of poetry, literary dialogue, debate and discussions, and readings...”. The festival “will provide a platform to celebrate the written word and create a forum for the rich literary tradition that exists in the region”. The event, scheduled to be held in September, was to host significant writers from across India. But since the announcement of the Harud (autumn) Festival, there have been just virulent protests.
A writer’s craft is a lonely one as he toils away in the isolation of his imagination, or delves into an obscure personal past. Writers can thus be quirky. It is, therefore, not surprising that they find it difficult to work together. The latest casualty is the Harud Literary Festival — it has fallen prey to bickering amongst them.
Writers can make words play elfin-pranks; they can also turn them into assassins. The organisers of the Harud called the event an “apolitical” one, at which some invitees saw red. Authors like Jane Austen have shown us that life itself is political, and this is especially true for those who live in the Kashmir Valley or Palestine. The organisers say, if belatedly, that an apolitical festival would not have invited the likes of Basharat Peer (author of Curfewed Night and Mirza Waheed (author of The Collaborator) whose writings are essentially political (and which authors have now turned antagonists towards the festival? Were they invited?). An article in the New York Times recalls that “when Ian McEwan travelled to Israel earlier this year to accept the prestigious Jerusalem Prize, he was criticised by activists and writers who urged a boycott because of Israeli policies toward Palestin-ians. McEwan chose to attend, and delivered a blistering speech that decried the Israeli government’s confiscation, land purchases, and expulsion in East Jerusalem, fissures that mark the conflict-ridden nation”. Apologists for the organisers now say that they had meant “non-partisan” and not “apolitical”.
Basharat Peer, who is perhaps the better-known of the present generation of writers from the Valley, elaborates his views in his piece titled “A writer is not a jukebox” in a recent edition of the Hindu. For him, a literary festival “by definition, is an event that celebrates the free flow of ideas and opinions. It demands a certain independence of spirit”. He goes on to say that “to hold it in a context where some basic fundamental rights are markedly absent, indeed, denied to the population, is to commit a travesty”; and that the campus for the event in Srinagar “next to the biggest military camp in Kashmir” was wholly unwarranted. Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, et al. write in their open letter calling for a boycott of the Galle Literary Festival that “unless and until there is real improvement in the climate for free expression in Sri Lanka, you cannot celebrate writing and the arts...”
Would not the neighbouring military camp in Srinagar have provided a perfect backdrop for Peer’s speech?
Was not McEwan’s participation in Jerusalem a grand celebration of the power of the writer’s voice? You could well also ask how long they would be willing to wait to have a festival in, say, China? The novelist V.V. Ganeshananthan, of Sri Lankan Tamil origin, a participant of an earlier Galle Festival during yet more turbulent times in that country, writes: “The great traditions of solidarity are built on conversation, long and careful study and thought, and yes, informed travel of the mind and body — not the petition of a moment this is a long engagement, and must emphasise serious exchange — something that has no chance of happening if the door is closed.”
That the Galle Festival was co-sponsored by Sri Lanka’s leading tourism promoting agencies was publicly acknowledged. The antecedents of the Harud Festival in Peer’s view “given the obvious political connection of the lead sponsor” (he mentions the grand-daughter of Hari Singh, once ruler of Kashmir, and Vijay Dhar “a businessman with strong Congress Party connections”),were dubious and so he decided to stay away. The festival producer Namita Gokhale clarifies that “ours was an independent effort. We have received some funding support from corporate sources but no funding from any government source”. It would seem that genuine doubts could have been settled earlier, not that it would ever be easy to establish the true source of funds.
But, as Peer says, who really matter are “the boys and girls who are growing up to tell the story of Kashmir and the stories of places and ideas beyond Kashmir”, who “are reading, thinking, writing in the solitude of their rooms...” who “won’t be seeking crumbs at a table, they won’t mortgage their souls The strength of their work will tear open the gates”.
The paradox, though, lies in the festival producer’s final clarification: “The festival was cancelled in response to the ‘Boycott Harud Festival’ group on Facebook which had asked people to gather to protest ‘with their fists’ (and) a threat to ‘behead’ one of our colleagues was also posted on this site, which had over 4,500 people signed up”. Did Peer and his cohort then do as the Economist suggests: “Through their opposition to holding a festival of ideas in a state with restrictions on free speech (do) the work of the Indian authorities for them”?
Now, we will perhaps have to wait for another season when the promised debates and discussions could take place, conversations which would include the many writers from the Valley who have made a name for themselves, other writers, the boys and girls who Peer says “really matter” and, hopefully, the Facebook crowd who were to protest “with their fists”.