A three-day Parallel Literature Festival (PLF) opened here on Saturday as an answer to the ongoing Jaipur Literature Festival with a passionate call to writers and poets to fight against the politics of hate.
The first edition of PLF was organised by Pragatisheel Lekhak Sangh to offer a platform to Hindi and other Indian languages, which, the organisers say, have been ignored in the JLF.
The PLF participants also described the JLF as a “grand show of opulence”, which was not concerned about genuine literature.
Littérateurs Vishnu Khare, Maitreyi Pushpa, Leeladhar Mandloi, Vibhuti Narain Rai, Rajendra Rajan, Arjun Deo Charan and Naresh Saxena lit the lamp for the PLF.
PLF convenor Krishna Kalpit said parallel movements in the fields of culture, arts, cinema and politics had made a mark for themselves in the past.
Flavour of capitalism
“This parallel literary event is going to expose the so-called literary face of capitalism. It has no market element...It is firmly founded on the egalitarian traditions of Indian literary movements,” he said.
The launch of the Progressive Writers’ Movement in 1936 by Sajjad Zahir and Munshi Premchand, both of whom inspired people through their writings against social injustice and backwardness, was described at the PLF as a momentous event that had set the trend for the coming generations of writers.
Lekhak Sangh’s Rajasthan president Rituraj said while the progressive movement had led to the creation of some of the finest pieces of fiction and poetry before and after Independence, events like the JLF were creating new definitions of literature by which the elite class was turning against Indian languages and culture.
While Mr. Khare said the festival culture was benefiting the publishers rather than readers and authors, Mr. Saxena said the “forced learning” of English in India was suppressing the talent of young children. The festival concludes on Monday.
