All roads are now leading to Hotel Clarks Amer as the Jaipur Literature Festival — the biggest literary festival in the world — is set to open again on January 19 this year. Celebrated author and historian William Dalrymple, who co-founded the annual festival along with Sahitya Akademi award-winning writer Namita Gokhale in 2008, traces its trajectory and tells us what to expect at Jaipur Literature Festival 2023.
William Dalrymple, co-founder and Festival Director, Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), is visibly chuffed. “This year, we are very lucky that we’ve got Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the Nobel prize for Literature in 2021, 2022 International Booker Prize winner Geetanjali Shree, 2022 Booker winner Shehan Karunatilaka, 2022 Women’s Prize winner for Fiction Ruth Ozeki, two Pulitzer winners, we’ve got everyone… the world’s greatest writers, everyone is turning up this time!”
The JLF, which found its feet a little more than 15 years ago with just 18 writers and 100 attendees, has grown to a five-day event across five venues and 250+ erudite speakers, attended by lakhs. So, here is Dalrymple, complete and unabridged, speaking about various aspects of the festival that has put India on the global literary map…
Before JLF
It’s impossible to imagine now in an age when almost every small town in India has its own lit fest and not just in India but Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives… it’s become a sort of extraordinary wave, but Jaipur was the first. And before Jaipur, there was a very odd situation whereby there were literary festivals all over the West and one would see all the Indian authors there. But the only place where I wouldn’t see them was in India.
So, you know, you’d go to New York and there would be Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, and Arundhati Roy… then three weeks later, there’d be the Hay Festival and there they would all be again. But in Delhi, you wouldn’t see them except maybe when the British Council held a launch. There wasn’t a venue for writers. It’s impossible to imagine that now because in a sense we are impossible to avoid these days!
How it all began
JLF started with a wonderful festival called the Jaipur Virasat, a heritage festival founded by John and Faith Singh who also founded the Anokhi shop (the one with the wonderful, printed textiles). This was their kind of retirement project after they handed the business over to their children in the time-honoured Indian manner and did this. It was a wonderful festival involving their particular passions, which were music and fashion and design, and initially it didn’t have any writers at all.
They invited me along in 2004 as the first writer of the festival. I gave a session and I realised this was a wonderful thing because a) it was in January when there are no other festivals in Europe as it’s cold and miserable and everyone is in hibernation; b) it was in Jaipur, which is a city people would love to go to as it would be a wonderful winter break for anyone; and c) there were no other venues for writers which gave a platform.
And yet that was a time when Indian writing was all the rage. This was the period when the Booker prize seemed to be entirely in Indian hands every year! Kiran Desai, Aravind Adiga, Arundhati Roy and so on… and if it wasn’t in Indian hands, then it was in the hands of Pakistan Mohsin Hamid, Kamila Shamsie, etc.
The early days of JLF
It was very odd that there wasn’t a literary festival and I had just done my first really big international book tour with White Mughals and that was the first one of my books which was a success not just in Britain and India but in many languages in many countries and if you are successful there now you can easily spend six months going from book fair to book fair, book festival to book festival and I had seen Indian authors in everyone but I’d never seen them in India. So, I invited them to Jaipur.
First of all, Hari Kunzru was our first invitation and then it got bigger, we had 16 the next year. And then, after a couple of years, the music went off and became the Jodhpur RIFF (Rajasthan International Folk Festival) which is a wonderful festival that’s still held at Mehrangarh Fort, and we stayed on in Jaipur and became the Jaipur Lit Fest.
Our first year, we had Salman Rushdie, Kiran Desai, and Suketu Mehta, and suddenly, everyone in Delhi that would be slightly snotty about what they had thought about as a provincial Rajasthani festival, why in Jaipur, suddenly all the Delhi fashionable folk decided that we were worth going to and came to see us.
Growing gains
Often, as you know in this country when something gets kind of an international name suddenly everyone wakes up (that’s not how it should be, but that is often how it is) and from that point the festival just grew and grew. By about 2010, we were approaching a quarter of a million people and just before the pandemic we hit a third of a million.
We are very proud how it’s become a fashion now, how you spend all of the winter months going from book festival to book festival from Calicut to Chennai to Bengaluru to Kolkata. And it’s lovely to have started this in South Asia. I also think it’s a sign of a vibrant society that it takes the written word seriously and every festival is full of new writers, often young writers, who have wonderful things to say.
My theory is that this is something that is deeply rooted in India because India, although it hasn’t had the lit fests as such, has always had a tradition of performed storytelling, whether it is wandering storytellers of Bengal or whether it’s the whole tradition where the Mahabharata, and the Ramayana were performed by bards.
Or in Tamil country it’s Sangam literature, or in Jaipur itself and every day the durbar would start with poetry… so the idea that books are not just something to be read privately at home but publicly in the public space and performed is an idea that this country is very friendly with for many centuries and I think that maybe one reason why it has taken off in quite the way it has.
The devil’s in the details
I do this (the planning and invitations) along with Sanjoy K Roy, our producer (Managing Director, Teamwork Arts), he often has a small list of people whose favours he wants to call in (laughs), Namita (Gokhale) mainly does the Indian writers, particularly those in the bhaasha languages that are not in English, while my main focus is on history and on the international writers.
I personally do my list in June, Namita probably starts hers before me. We have the list kind of ready by September, start knitting it together in October, and have it pretty well locked by November. But then you know, someone gets married or some trauma takes place, and there are always changes and it goes on and on. For example, I woke up to two cancellations this morning and we have to replace those writers with others. The programme does not remain fixed even after it’s printed. It’s like a kaleidoscope where even if one thing changes, then everything moves.
Beyond words at JLF
Since it grew from a music festival, we’ve always had a music stage. Initially we started more informal as in John Singh would just turn up with the musicians, often manganiars or langars from Rajasthan because that’s where we are, but other stuff too, and that’s grown and grown. I think we’ve had fewer international bands lately, but we’ve got Peter Cat Recording Company and all sorts of amazing ones this year.
What I love about this, and I think the reason why it’s been such a big fest — it is now the biggest literary festival in the world — and the reason I think is a combination of the greatest writers, we also have the wonderful location (who wouldn’t want to spend a weekend in such a historic place with countless hotels of every budget and good connections from the airport?); is a good time of the year in January weatherwise (cool mornings and evenings and warm but not hot in the day); and then you know it’s just a great place to hang out, to go shopping…
Like with TravelDine, you can travel, you can dine and shop very well. Most of our audiences that come in will at least spend one morning outside the festival.
Every session I’ve ever been there is packed, and often with kids, and the minute that the writer stops speaking a thousand hands go up so that is there. But yes, we also have a bazaar where there’s shopping on the edge of it and you know half of Delhi’s there with Dior sunglasses taking selfies.
I can’t deny for a bit that that takes place too! I mean I’m sure when Shakespeare first performed King Lear in London, there were people outside the theatre not taking much interest in the plot. When Kalidasa put on Meghadūta, I’m sure it was the case then too. I think that comes with the territory!
Good to know
Event: Jaipur Literature Festival | Dates: January19-23, 2023 | Timings: 9 am to 6 pm | Venue: Hotel Clarks Amer, Jaipur | Instagram: @jaipurliteraturefest, @williamdalrymple, @namitagokhale @jaipurmusicstage.
[Note: This is the first of a two-part series featuring the author. In Part Two, which will be published soon, William Dalrymple will be talking about travel writing, his own travel wish list, and his newest passions.]
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