Litfest concludes with talk on ancient civilisations, India in 2047
The 13th edition of the Khushwant Singh Litfest concluded on Sunday. With guest speakers of the likes of mythologist and writer Devdutt Pattanaik, former Indian bureaucrat and ex-CEO of NITI Aayog Amitabh Kant, human rights lawyer Rohin Bhatt and many others, it jumped from one session to another and the audience couldn’t get enough of them.
In the very first session of the day on ‘Unravelling the Harappan Mystery’, Pattanaik shared his observation on the Indus Valley Civilisation that it was predominantly a mercantile civilisation in which warfare and punditry were alien concepts. Pattanaik also talked about his latest book, Ahimsa, which, he said, explored the nuances of the Harappan times through the lens of mythology that were contemporary to the Mesopotamian civilisation.
Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the Harappan civilisation by Sir John Marshall, Pattanaik shared that his aim was to explore the cultural truths embedded in its art and artefacts, rather than the written stories often associated with other ancient civilisations.
Pattanaik addressed the long-held assumptions about Harappa, particularly the lack of imposing architecture, a hallmark of other ancient civilisations like Egypt. He questioned how certain conclusions about Harappan society such as marriage customs were drawn without concrete evidence and why women were often depicted as entertainers or goddesses while men were portrayed as authoritarians, challenging conventional gender roles. He concluded by reflecting on the impact of the Partition of India on Harappan discoveries. Despite the division of historical sites, significant discoveries such as Dholavira and Rakhigarhi have expanded the understanding of this ancient civilisation.
In the last session, ‘Viksit Bharat 2047’, Kant, in conversation with economist and journalist Prem Shankar Jha, underlined how Indian economy would grow nine times in the next 30 years to realise the dream of Viksit Bharat. He expressed the urgent need to make a shift from agriculture to industry to achieve that. Kant, who serves as India’s G20 Sherpa, shared that an effort was made during the G20 meetings to conceptualise this ‘shift’ for practical purposes. This led to help formulate plans like ‘ek zila, ek utpad’ to give an impetus to art and culture at the grassroots level. He added, “The basic philosophy in my book, The Elephant Moves: India’s New Place in the World, is that it’s not possible for India to grow rapidly at 9.6 to 10.2% year after year for three decades or more which Japan (1950-1970) or South Korea (1960-1990) or China (1990-2010) did. If India has that ambition, it can’t grow only on the support of services sector. You need to grow your manufacturing, do sustainable urbanisation, which is very critical, and enhance agriculture productivity. Agricultural productivity wouldn’t increase with such high dependency of population on agriculture.” Another highlight of the day was a session, ‘Some Indians are more equal than others’, with lawyers Saurabh Kirpal and Rohin Bhatt in conversation with The Tribune Editor-in-Chief Jyoti Malhotra. Kirpal’s book, Who is Equal?, and Bhatt’s debut book, The Complexities of India’s LGBTQ+ Movement, were central to the conversation on justice, liberty and equality to all guaranteed by the Constitution. Kirpal shared, “Almost no one is equal. We try to do so much to mitigate equality like reservation or taxation, but it is so stubbornly persistent. The same goes for gender. Women have achieved so much and yet there are not as many successful and empowered women that the country needs. You cure one particular area of discrimination, another hydra head creeps up somewhere or the other.”
Gen Z lawyer Bhatt spoke about the inequality that the LGBTQIA+ community faces under the Indian Constitution.
The enthusiastic crowd leapt at the opportunity of asking questions and few out of many forced the moderators and speakers to stray away from the topic of the day. But who cares when there’s a free flow of knowledge and dialogue amidst mountains, cold breeze, books and an event full of interesting personalities from across the nation.
