BOOKENDED BY MELAS AND FESTS

ILLIAM

- PRATIK KANJILAL

Dalrymple recently sputtered like a lit fuse on X at an “irritating and ignorant article” in The Guardian that had asked why India has over 100 literary festivals but low book sales and no culture of reading. Is it because entertainments like Bollywood are included in festivals? Why did Dalrymple feel irritated when the argument about poor sales and low readership has been around for decades?

The article by Amrit Dhillon only added the contrast between the smallness of the publishing industry in India and the boom in literature festivals, led by the Jaipur Literature Festival that Dalrymple co-founded. She offered supporting quotes from authors, booksellers and publishers. All of them affirm that the book trade moves slowly, but Indians like anice jamboree. This rather harmless allegation burst like an inflamed boil.

Blame the name. The literature (or literary) festival is a British creature of postwar provenance—the oldest is at Cheltenham, an annual feature from 1949, and the best-known is at Hay-on-Wye, established in 1988, which exported the concept and the name overseas. In India, JLF adopted the format in 2006, grew exponentially and encouraged entrepreneurs with literary leanings—and organisations which understand that literariness works like angel dust—to get in on the game. Writing became performative.