21 Aug 2011 03:18:42
Organisers say the festival, scheduled for next month, will create "an open and democratic space for poetry, readings and dialogue", but leading cultural figures in the Muslim-majority territory are already saying the event is propaganda and several international Kashmiri writers have made clear they do not want to take part.
One is London-based Mirza Waheed, whose first novel, The Collaborator, was published to critical acclaim earlier this year. "The organisers have said the event will be apolitical. So what would I do if I was there? What would I read? Every page I have written is political," he told the Guardian.
Another high-profile author who will not be attending is Basharat Peer, author of the much praised Curfewed Night, an autobiographical account of growing up in the worst years of the conflict between insurgents and Indian security forces in Kashmir in the 1990s.
"It really makes me angry," Peer said. "The mainstream Indian press has made it sound like the festival is part of bringing civilisation to Kashmir. It's a fine idea but the framing of the event in the media has been extremely problematic and condescending." Kashmir was divided between Pakistan and India in the violent chaos that followed the end of British imperial rule in south Asia. Unrest in the former princely kingdom, the only Muslim-majority state in largely Hindu India, prompted a draconian security crackdown in the late 1980s.
Up to 70,000 died in the ensuing conflict. In recent years, violence has ebbed, in part due to better relations between India and neighbouring Pakistan, although last year still saw hundreds of insurgents, police, soldiers and civilians were killed.
In their reports on the festival, the Indian Express referred to "winds of change" while the Times of India said the state was "turning a page".
Even if this summer has so far been relatively calm, some Kashmiris are angered by claims that the situation is normal.
"A festival just for the sake of literature is always welcome but if it is done to show that everything is OK these days then it is a problem," said Arshad Mushtaq, a well-known local playwright whose recent work focused on the ongoing detention without trial of young men in Kashmir. "How can discussion be free and fair if people are afraid to speak their minds? It is an exercise in propaganda?"
Organiser Namita Gokhale, part of the team that created the internationally renowned festival in the western Indian city of Jaipur, said that the idea for the Kashmir event had come from Kashmiris. "The idea arose from a wish to emulate some of the stimulating results of other festivals. There was special interest and enthusiasm from several Kashmiri writers after the success and visibility of the Kashmir sessions at the Jaipur literature festival this year," she said.
"There is nothing wrong with controversy. There was perhaps some misinterpretation of my use of the word 'apolitical' … The festival will attempt to provide a literary platform for all shades of opinion."
