Jaipur Literature Festival 2022 to begin from March 5: Check everything out about this cultural affair!

Jaipur Literature Festival 2022 is back with more than 300 speakers, including authors and various artists in a hybrid avatar with both its on-ground experience and virtual presence. Read more about the festival below!

One of the most awaited amalgamations of literature, culture, and people, the Jaipur Literature Festival, is set to welcome the patrons this year between March 5 to March 14 with the on-ground programme from 10th to 14th March at Clarks Amber.

The iconic annual Jaipur Literature Festival is back again at its cherished home, Jaipur, in a hybrid avatar with both its on-ground magnificence as well as its nifty virtual presence. The hybrid version will enable a larger audience to access the Festival offerings, reaching out to book-lovers across continents. Teamwork Arts, the producer of the iconic Festival, promotes art and world heritage with numerous innovative initiatives at the Festival. Even this time, they are ready with all the safety precautions in mind. The Festival will follow all COVID-19 protocols that will be mandated by the central and Rajasthan governments during the time of its rescheduled dates.

Sanjoy K. Roy, Managing Director of Teamwork Arts, who produces the Jaipur Literature Festival, said, “Keeping in mind the advent of the new variant and the sharp rise in the number of cases across the country, we thought it was best to reschedule the Festival and hold it in March 2022. We remain committed to bringing the Festival back to Jaipur as an on-ground, immersive experience, promoting dialogue, discussion and debate on books and ideas.”

The extravaganza to remember

It is definitely going to be an event to remember as just like in previous years, the festival will feature various sessions highlighting many aspects of art and culture. Performing arts legend Sohini Roychowdhury, an exponent of Bharatanatyam, and Sharon Lowen, a renowned dancer of Indian classical dance forms like Odissi, Manipuri, Mayurbhanj & Seraikella Chhau, will join Manjari Sinha, acclaimed music and dance critic, for a fascinating conversation on Sringara, exploring the evocative and evolutionary form. The session will examine the vast history and many interpretations of Sringara, an aesthetic peak, often considered the mother of all nine rasas in Indian dance.

In conversation with Festival Producer and Managing Director of Teamwork Arts, Sanjoy K. Roy, Thakore, Menon, and Lahiri will discuss the essence of theatre, its genius, its magic, and its pervading misogyny. Roy will also be in conversation with much-loved Indian singer and musician Remo Fernandes at a session exploring the pursuit of his greatest loves: music, art, writing, and his homeland, Goa.

B.N. Goswamy, one of the most eminent art historians, will open a window to a wide range of subjects - all on or around the arts, which have immense potential to form aesthetic sensibility. In an engaging and comprehensive session with Jaipur Literature Festival Co-Director William Dalrymple, Goswamy will discuss his book conversations which promise to be a truly accessible primer on art in India and South Asia.

At another session titled Mughal Portraiture: Presence and Absence, independent art historian Ursula Weekes will be in conversation with author and art historian Yashaswini Chandra. Weekes' upcoming book, Mughal Court Painting in India, follows more than a decade of her writing and teaching on Mughal art and culture. She will discuss her latest project on how portraits were important agents in projecting the religious, social, and political identities of the members of the Mughal court.

The Festival will feature a session that evokes the sensual lure of the human body as well as the essential ambiguities of its representation. Writer, commentator and vascular surgeon Ambarish Satwik will introspect upon the distance between the naked and the nude in the anatomy of our race, even as modern imaging technologies render us asexual and transparent. Celebrated writer, curator, and historian Alka Pande whose recent book Pha(bu)llus studies the power of phallic symbolism as a key and recurring motif in religion, culture, and art, will also be part of the same. In this conversation, they will discuss art and the nature of the erotic, as well as the anti-nude, in the context of the sensuous, the mortal, the philosophical, and the spiritual.

Writer, screenwriter, and activist Farrukh Dhondy boasts of as many scintillating life experiences as professional accolades. From bearing witness to pre-Independent India, the Partition and many a social movement to meeting a roster of eclectic and even murderous celebrities, Dhondy’s life is a cinematic rollercoaster. In conversation with film and theatre director Arghya Lahiri, Dhondy will discuss his life as a writer.

Jaipur Literature Festival will have an array of themes, India 75 being one of its highlights. As India completes its 75th year of Independence, the 15th edition of the Festival will look at various facets of India’s journey so far with a diverse set of sessions.

A session will be organized to explore the narratives and counter-narratives of the electoral process and democratic systems. The panel will be graced by former Chief Election Commissioner of India and the author of Every Vote Counts Navin B. Chawla; National Spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janta Party and the author of Makers of Modern Dalit History Guru Prakash Paswan; eminent jurist and retired judge of the Supreme Court of India Justice Madan B. Lokur. The esteemed panel will be in conversation with academic and author Mukulika Banerjee discussing the political and electoral process, the paradoxes of democracy, and its triumphs and discontents.

Writer and journalist Saket Suman’s enlightening book, The Psychology of a Patriot, presents a thought-provoking chronicle of India. Writer, poet, and academic Makarand R. Paranjape’s upcoming books include JNU: Nationalism and India’s Uncivil War. Gurmehar Kaur’s most recent work, The Young and the Restless: Youth and Politics in India, explores the electoral and ideological involvement of the youth in the Indian democracy as it presents a dexterous generational evaluation of political identity. Eminent academic and the author Badri Narayan's Republic of Hindutva: How the Sangh Is Reshaping Indian Democracy examines the evolving structures and systems of belief that comprise the RSS. In conversation with author, academic, and social anthropologist Mukulika Banerjee, they will discuss the coming-of-age of an entire nation focusing on its foundations and future. Mukulika Banerjee‘s new monograph Cultivating Democracy: Politics and Citizenship in Agrarian India is a study of the relationship between political democracy and active citizenship in rural India, particularly West Bengal.

At another session, Banerjee will be in conversation with writer, journalist, and translator Namita Waikar. Together, they will explore the democratic values and notions of agriculture that shape the country’s political landscape(s).

The disability rights movement in India is salient but underrepresented. Professor and entrepreneur Anita Sharma called over 2,000 driving schools in the country and found that none catered to people with reduced mobility. Having survived polio and knowing the requirements to learn this skill confidently, she began On My Own, a driving school for people with reduced mobility. Indian social entrepreneur, writer, and disability rights activist Nipun Malhotra; journalist and novelist C.K. Meena, and Senior Vice President and Head of SAP Engineering Academy V.R Ferose have co-authored an insightful book on the lives of Persons with Disabilities in India, The Invisible Majority: India’s Abled Disabled. They will be in conversation with Festival producer and Managing Director of Teamwork Arts, Sanjoy K. Roy at an illuminating session on the rights and representation of India’s Persons with Disabilities.

A leading scholar of rural economy Maryam Aslany’s compelling new book Contested Capital: Rural Middle Classes in India throws light on the vast, evolving rural middle classes in India, to which more than a third of the country’s middle class, a key component of economic analysis and forecasts, belongs. Aslany will be in conversation with writer, politician, and former diplomat Pavan K. Varma, whose penetrating study The Great Indian Middle Class traces the evolution of this socio-economic group through the twentieth century.

Senior journalist Sagarika Ghose, author of the political biography Indira: India’s Most Powerful Prime Minister, presents a deeply researched and revealing personal portrait of Vajpayee in her new book Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Author, social scientist, and journalist Nalin Mehta’s latest book The New BJP: Modi and the Making of the World’s Largest Political Party examines how the political party reshaped the Indian polity with its own brand of social engineering, powered by new caste coalitions, a focus on marginalized social groups and the making of a women-voter base. They will be in conversation with journalist Mandira Nayar discussing Vajpayee, the man, and his legacy.

Commemorating the 1971 war between India and Pakistan, Operation X, written by former Indian Navy Officer Captain MNR Samant and author Sandeep Unnithan, is the untold story behind one of the world’s largest covert naval wars. Naval Commando Operations (X) was the Directorate of the Naval Intelligence’s code for a series of complicated guerrilla operations directed against the maritime jugular of the Pakistan Army in erstwhile East Pakistan. Collaboratively they will explore the inner world of this conflict and its many intricacies with naval historian Commodore Srikant B. Kesnur.

India’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak followed by a total shutdown marked an unimaginable national tragedy leaving millions of migrant workers stranded, starving and unemployed. Award-winning filmmaker Vinod Kapri’s 1232 Kms documents the journey of seven migrant workers to their village, a crisis faced by millions who were forced to walk hundreds of kilometres home, through deadly conditions, abandoned by an administration with only a shrug to offer for their hardship. Fellow journalist and author Puja Changoiwala’s Homebound tells the story of an unrelenting family determined to survive and hope against a humanitarian catastrophe. In conversation with academic and author Chinmay Tumbe, Kapri and Changoiwala will discuss the faces and forces at the centre of the exodus and its numbers.

At a session concentrated on ‘Sri Aurobindo’, medical doctor, poet, and philosopher Pariksith Singh and writer Makarand R. Paranjape, in conversation with academic, editor, and writer Malashri Lal, will explore their perspectives of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy and his ‘inner quest’ as articulated in his writings and life. In his edited anthology, ‘Sri Aurobindo’, Paranjape explores the brilliant and complex mind of a remarkable yogi and seer-poet. Singh's book Sri Aurobindo and the Literary Renaissance of India compares Sri Aurobindo with fifteen titans of philosophy, starting from the likes of Nietzsche and Derrida.

The legendary and emblematic names in Hindi literature - Ramdhari Singh Dinkar and Subhadra Kumari Chauhan evoke idealism and inspiration in equal measure. Dinkar’s nationalist poetry, written before India’s Independence, was a prelude to the dawn of a new sensibility whereas Chauhan's iconic poem, Jhansi ki Rani remains fresh in the hearts, minds, and lips of successive generations. Writer, poet, and musicologist Yatindra Mishra and scholar, writer, academic and historian, Tripurdaman Singh will speak of the lives and legacy of the two poets, their deep commitment and rooted patriotism, and the impact they continue to have on the identity and understanding of Hindi literature.

William Dalrymple, writer, historian, and Co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival, said, “We are coming back with a truly spectacular line up of literary superstars from across the world. In fiction, we have this year’s Booker winner, the great Damon Galgut, his predecessors Monica Ali & DBC Pierre, Pullizer winner Jonathan Franzen and Turkish superstar Elif Shafak. We have Rob Macfarlane on nature writing, Rupert Everett on Hollywood, Vidya Dehejia on Chola bronzes. We also have a special focus on archaeology and ancient history: Cat Jarman on the Vikings, David Wengrove on the Dawn of Everything and many more.”

The Festival will offer a spectacular Heritage Event and the Jaipur Music Stage will run parallel to the main Festival as always. Like every year, the winner of the annual Ojas Art Award will also be announced.

A night market with a range of merchandise including instruments, music technology, music from indie labels, and other paraphernalia, will add sizzle to this unique medley of festivities. The Jaipur Music Stage is more than just a place for literature-enthusiasts to unwind after an exhilarating day of talks: it is a musical confluence opening audiences up to new sounds and experiences.

Registration and access to the online edition of the Festival are free and open to all. Registration for the on-ground edition of the Festival will be available at INR 200 per day.

Website: Jaipur Literature Festival

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