The 18th edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival reaffirmed the power of unbiased discourse

Jaipur, February 4, 2025 – The Jaipur Literature Festival, presented by Vedanta in association with Maruti Suzuki, and powered by VIDA, concluded its 18th edition on a high note, bringing together writers, thinkers, and creative ideas from across the globe to celebrate the power of storytelling and unbiased discourse. Held at Hotel Clark’s Amer, this year’s Festival welcomed over 600 speakers, offering a series of insightful discussions, debates, and performances. The multi-faceted event served as a meeting point for both established and emerging voices in literature, as well as for those passionate about literature’s ability to inspire, challenge, and create a meaningful change in the world.

In a house packed with lovers of literature and music, the legendary music producer Joe Boyd, who has worked with Pink Floyd, Nick Drake and R.E.M, was in conversation with Caroline Eden to discuss his recent book ‘And the Roots of Rhythm Remain’. Boyd said, “What I’m writing about is the music that we in the so-called West know the best, but don’t know anything about. Everybody likes reggae, and Latin music, Brazilian samba, and Argentine tango, eastern-European gypsy music and Indian music. And so, the structure of the book is to take each of those styles, look at how they entered our world, and where they began.” The book evocatively explores the global influences and history behind popular Western music.

The distinguished descendants of Mahatma Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy, Gopalkrishna Gandhi and Daniil Tolstoy, were also in conversation. Their discussion commenced with Gopalkrishna Gandhi recounting Mahatma Gandhi’s arrival in London, which was marked by an unexpected turn of events following the assassination of Sir Curzon Wyllie. This incident subjected Gandhi to significant political and social scrutiny. Simultaneously, a letter by Leo Tolstoy, A Letter to a Hindu, was circulating in London, emphasizing that love, rather than hatred, was the key to overcoming British rule in India. The discussion brought together Gopalkrishna Gandhi and Daniil Tolstoy in a profound intergenerational exchange. As the session progressed, excerpts were read from A Letter to a Hindu, in which Tolstoy had drawn from ancient Tamil spiritual texts that continue to be revered today. The discussion concluded with reflections on how Tolstoy’s correspondence with Gandhi shaped the latter’s philosophy, ultimately inspiring the Satyagraha movement, which played a crucial role in India’s struggle for independence.

Writer, playwright and actor Manav Kaul’s heartfelt account of his journey as an author marked the beginning of the final day of the Jaipur Literature Festival with the session ‘A Bird On My Window Sill’. “You will find more of me in my writings than you will in my looks”, said Kaul as he proclaimed his love for books, solitude and travelling solo. Kaul also spoke of the nostalgia that ‘chai’ brings and how it became an important part of his life, eventually playing a big part in his writings. Kaul emphasised the importance of real-life experiences as a driving force for his writing; one has to wait for the words to come to you and once they come to you, there is nothing more beautiful than that. “Me and my friend, Saleem, used to sit on the Hoshangabad railway station and watch the trains go by. Sitting there, we always used to wonder where these fast-paced trains were going, where they were terminating. I wanted to see all those places, and even today I have that child-like curiosity to visit all those places and meet all the people.”

A much-loved session, ‘Empire: Udham Singh: The Man and the Myth’, between Anita Anand and William Dalrymple, who collaborate on one of present-day’s most popular podcasts ‘Empire’, brought their characteristic podcast-style banter to the Monday morning. Anand dramatically recounted the story of Udham Singh’s 20-year quest for justice after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. She described her family’s connection with the massacre and told the story of a moment when she visited the site with her children and realised it could just as easily have been them. That personal connection motivated her to bring the story to a broader audience. Her retelling spanned all the way from Singh watching hundreds die around him all the way to the fateful two bullets that ignited a legend. Dalrymple’s interjections shaped the story with humour, wit and flair that together kept the audience captivated until the final moment.

At the session, ‘Chhaunk: On Food, Economics and Security’, Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee and Cheyenne Olivier were in conversation with Vir Sanghvi. Banerjee and Oliver explored how economics intrinsically connects with society, focusing specifically on food security. Oliver used the United States as a case study for what happens when food becomes a manner of piling ingredients rather than generating brilliance with constraint. Thoughtful restraint is key, both in cooking and in life at large, Banerjee said. Oliver and Banerjee also discussed how they used art and cartoons to bring larger economic principles to life. They tried to put themselves in the mind of a naïve reader to simplify complicated concepts to a modern audience. They also brought out the fact that most iconic foods in the world are actually the food of the masses – the pizza, the khichri or even chowmein.

Banerjee said, “Economics is intimately connected to the way we live our lives from every direction,” and followed it up with, “ I often thought about how to make economics more palatable. How do you get people to read economics without throwing jargon at them? I understood that writing about food would be a great way to connect the two…Great cuisine comes out of constraint, thinking about how you can make something out of very little… And that’s one great thing about Indian food, is that there’s so many delicious things made out of the most everyday ingredients.”

In ‘A Day in the Life of Abed Salama’, Nathan Thrall was in conversation with Ghaith Abdul-Ahad. Thrall’s book A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, narrates the gut-wrenching story of Salama, who loses his son in a bus crash. Through a story of personal loss, Thrall uncovers the larger reality of life under Israeli dominance. A close observer of the Israel-Palestine conflict, Thrall lives and reports from Jerusalem. Thrall’s book traces the real causality of the incident which took Salama’s son away. Thrall chose the primary storyline of the book as the fast-paced story of the bus crash to keep readers hooked to the book.

A packed session, ‘Jab We Met Imitaz Ali’ had Imtiaz Ali in conversation with Anupama Chopra. Ali shared his experience of twenty years as a filmmaker, producer and screenwriter. He spoke of the challenges that social media brings to you as an individual, how it can make a person sycophantic because it keeps giving you the feed that you want to see. Ali said, “Success is something that people enjoy or want, but I think failure can teach you a lot of things. Life is not only success and failure, life is also what your relationships are, what you are striving to do, etc. All those remain unaffected (by success or failure). What is important is to be able to be better at the work that you want to do.”

A discussion of Mir Taqi Mir must begin with ‘Aadab’, said Vidya Shah during her session with Ranjit Hoskote. For Hoskote, the first point of excitement was that Mir represented an old era of Urdu, where there was a fair deal of Khari Boli, Braj, and Deccani. He went on to discuss what constituted the universe of Mir’s language—from Persian to many other languages across the subcontinent in the 18th century. He urged that Persian should be regarded as an official language in India, as there is so much transfer from Persian in Marathi and many other Indian languages. Speaking about languages like Braj, which constitute Mir’s verses, he said, “They have been erroneously reduced to ‘dialects’, which is a nonsense word.” Speaking of the themes Mir wrote about, Hoskote read out couplets on love, philosophy, politics, and wit. With this book, Hoskote sought to bring to the world of English textuality an older order of poetry, where utterance and orality were more important than the written word.

At the concurrently held Jaipur BookMark, a premier publishing conclave, a Festival Directors’ Roundtable, that featured Irenosen Okojie, Alice Mong, Govind Deecee, Janhavi Prasada, Jenny Niven, Jessie Friedman, Juan Manuel Guimerans, Namita Gokhale, Nicola Tuxworth, Olga Drenda, and Subha Sanja Urs, Namita Gokhale brought a sense of practicality to the subject, addressing the consternations expressed by zealots and journalists alike. Okojie and Drenda stressed the importance of cultural representation. Guimerans and Urs elaborated on the intersections found between local culture and literary spheres. Prasada gave importance to the idea of festivals as a retreat from a world engulfed by tragedy.

The Festival also conferred the Vani Prakashan Award to acclaimed writer, translator and journalist Shanta Gokhale. The award recognised her remarkable contributions to the literary world. A distinguished writer and translator since 1960, she has authored novels, plays, short stories, film scripts, and numerous newspaper articles. Her translations include works by Vijay Tendulkar, Mahesh Elkunchwar, Satish Alekar, G. P. Deshpande, and Rajeev Naik from Marathi into English, as well as Gieve Patel’s Mr Behram and Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom from English into Marathi.

The Festival’s much-anticipated Closing Debate, ‘Pacifism is for Losers,’ featured a panel comprising Mukulika Banerjee, Manpreet Vohra, Gideon Levy, Salil Tripathi, Yaroslav Trofimov, and Georgina Godwin, with Vir Sanghvi as the moderator and chair. It focused on the fractured world we inhabit and, in this age of conflict, whether war is the only option. During the debate, Trofimov said: “I agree that peaceful change is much preferable to violent solutions, but sometimes it’s impossible. I agree that pacifism is the weapon of the strong, unfortunately very many people facing adversity are not strong.”

In her opening remarks, Godwin said that “violence can bring about change but it comes at a terrible price. It infects a nation’s metabolism with a toxic residue. Violent revolutions often create a messianic leadership seldom leading to democracy.” Banerjee noted that “in the land of Gandhi, in the land of India, we think pacifism is a good thing because we associate it with that very imperfect English translation to mean non-violence and civil disobedience. These are words in English, but they don’t capture the spirit of that ideology, which is Satyagraha—it is not pacifism.” Levy stated: “My argument will best be framed by what Mahatma Gandhi said once that nonviolence is the weapon of the strong. And fortunately or unfortunately I represent a state which is the strong one.” The debate concluded with a discussion among the panelists in which Sanghvi asked them hard-hitting questions based on their opening remarks.

As this year’s Jaipur Literature Festival, presented by Vedanta, in association with Maruti Suzuki, and powered by VIDA comes to a close, we reflect on the lasting impact of the inspiring conversations, shared experiences, and new friendships forged at the Festival. With its unmatched diversity of thought, the Festival once again affirmed its place as the grand dame of all literature festivals. The next edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival which was announced today is set to start on 15 to 19 January, 2026.