First Jan Sahitya Parv to be Held in Jaipur
The first Jan Sahitya Parv—people’s literature festival—will be held in Jaipur on January 24 and 25, 2018. The two-day event, organised by Saajha Sanskritik Morcha, a joint cultural forum, will be held at the Rajasthan University and is open for all to attend.
The festival will see an array of renowned writers and artists associated with progressive social-cultural movements sharing their ideas and experiences in four languages – Hindi, Rajasthani, Urdu and Bhojpuri. The speakers include Dalit writer and activist Anita Bharati, poet Kavita Krishanpallavi, painter Kunwar Ravindra, poet Anil Janvijay, poet Sudhir Saxena, and journalists like Anil Chamadia and Anand Swaroop Verma. Activists like Aruna Roy, Kavita Krishnan, Nikhil Dey and Kavita Shrivastava will also be there, as will filmmakers Sanjay Joshi and Nakul Singh Sawhney. Amra Ram, former MLA of CPI(M) in Rajasthan, will also be there.
Over six sessions, they will discuss the Literature of Protest, History of Protest in the 20th Century; Theatre and Cinema of Protest, and Peoples’ Movements in Present-day Society.
On the eve of the Jan Sahitya Parv, a candle-light march will also be held at Mahatma Gandhi Statue on JLN Marg on January 23.
The ideas behind the festival can be traced back to a new wave of values that made their way into Indian society during the various nationwide peoples’ movements, people’s literature and folk culture. Besides freedom, these values put forward the ideas of equality and fraternity. These ideas bolstered the structure of a democratic society.
The recent past has seen a rise in intolerance and religious frenzy in the country, which led to the murders of progressive journalists and activists like Gauri Lankesh, MM Kalburgi and Ramchandra Chhatrapati. Meanwhile, globalisation and capitalism continue pushing individualism as an ideal at the expense of community and the power of the collective.
In these times of the rising fascist wave, passive appeals of the middle class for religious harmony are not enough, said the organisers in a press statement. People need to come together to protect our democratic values and wage an effective war against fascism.
The festival will also have book stalls, poster exhibitions, live painting events and screening of films.
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