LITERARY BOOM IN INDIA

Mizoram, a state in India's remote north-east that shares boundaries with Bangladesh and Myanmar, has one.

- Anupreeta Das

Surat, a city best known for its diamonds and textiles, has one. Bengaluru, the country's tech hub with a touch of hipness, has one. Kolkata, whose residents take their reputation for erudition seriously, has at least three.

And then there is the big one: the Jaipur Literature Festival, which calls itself the "greatest literary show on Earth" and recently celebrated its 18th year.

While India may appear consumed by Bollywood, cricket and phone screens, literature festivals are blooming, bringing readers and writers together in hilltop towns and rural communities, under the cover of beachside tents or inside storied palaces.

Some of the festivals, like the one in Jaipur - held from Jan 30 to Feb 3 - attract tens of thousands of people.

The Mizoram festival, held for the first time in October 2024 in Aizawl, the state capital, was a more intimate affair, with around 150 guests.

The boom has been driven by young people who, in a country of dozens of languages, are increasingly reading literature in their native tongues alongside books written in English.

For these readers, books open worlds that India's higher education system, with its focus on time-consuming preparation for make-or-break examinations, often does not.

The events' appeal has widened as organisers have begun promoting Indian writing in languages other than English. The five-day Jaipur festival, which early on focused almost entirely on English-language writing, has in recent years invited more authors who write in languages such as Telugu and Malayalam, two south Indian tongues.

To Namita Gokhale, an author and a co-founder of the Jaipur fair, the surge in book-focused festivals - by some estimates, there are now as many as 150 - signals a more confident nation.

"There's a new generation, people who are more naturally bilingual," Gokhale said. "A love and respect for the mother tongue is returning."