Chandigarh, August 30
Jammu & Kashmir’s first All-India Literature Festival, scheduled for September, has been put off indefinitely. The decision followed a vicious campaign on Facebook describing the Litfest as ‘Indian propaganda’ and calling upon the people to disrupt the festival by throwing stones.

The organisers’ plans to keep the festival ‘apolitical’ boomeranged, because some elements in the valley saw it as a ‘government agenda’ to tom tom normalcy in the Valley. The political campaign was spearheaded by a couple of Kashmiri writers settled abroad.

Ironically, New York based author Basharat Peer (author of Curfewed Night) and London based Mirza Waheed (author of The Collaborator), both of whom declined to attend the festival on the ground that their writing is political, have received acclaim in various literature festivals including the one in Jaipur.

“It is bizarre; first a national daily claiming to be the ‘masthead of India’ erroneously reported that Salman Rushdie will be attending the festival, then writers like Mirza and Basharat denounced the festival,” exclaimed one of the organisers on Tuesday.

While some people posted on Facebook an action-plan for stone pelting on September 22, the day the festival was to commence, eminent writers and publishers like David Davidar and Ravi Singh withdrew their consent to participate, apprehensive of violence spoiling the event.

None of the 25 writers from the Valley, however, called off their participation. They were waiting for an opportunity to get published and heard.

Naseem Shafaie, well known poet in the Valley says, “I belong to the literary fraternity of Kashmir and I can say they want the festival to take place and they appreciate the effort.”

Neerja Mattoo, eminent author and one of the few Kashmiri Pandits still living in the Valley, says, “We live here and we are not aware of any protest. Some of the writers from Kashmir who write in English can’t appropriate the whole Kashmiri question, those who write in Kashmiri also want their point of view to be known and published and they are disappointed by the cancellation.”

Urvashi Butalia, who was also one of the advisers to the festival says, as a publisher she feels it would have offered an opportunity to the voices in the Valley to engage with other voices, it could have opened more doors.

Amid allegations that the organisers refused to invite writers like Arundhati Roy, who is vociferous about the rights of the Kashmiris, organisers explained that Roy does not attend literary festivals.

“The topics selected for the sessions were radical and a large community was interested in the discourse,” says M K Raina, noted thespian, who had prepared a play with the village folks of Kashmir for Harud.