📢 Jaipur Literature Festival - Day 2
Musings on my tryst with politics from my second day at JLF
Day 2 was incredible. While I’ve focused on the political conversation in the newsletter, one of the highlights from the day came at night, when Ankur Tewari performed for an hour and half on the Jaipur Music Stage. Easily one of the best concerts I’ve been to.
One of my grandfather’s favorite quotes is from Dante’s Inferno. I was still in my early teens when he told it to me for the first time, at an age where I associated Dante only with Bayern Munich’s central defender. But the quote stuck with me, not least because Tata often repeated them to me. And always, with a panache.Â
‘The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in times of moral crisis preserve their neutrality’.Â
I studied Dante’s Divine Comedy in college but the first time these words really pierced through was in December 2019 when I returned to India for my winter break in my senior year. The anti CAA protests were picking up and there was a political charge sweeping through the city in a manner I’d never encountered. On a whim, I decided to attend one of these protest marches taking place in the city center. I’d been reading about the citizenship laws and their unjustness but my attendance at the protest was driven more by empathy than awareness. I spent that afternoon understanding, absorbing and documenting. I was a silent observer that day but I realized I couldn’t remain one anymore.Â
It’s a feeling that’s strengthened after returning to India in 2020. You see until then, my privilege had confined me to a bubble bereft of political thought. I had a core set of beliefs but I didn’t have a clear stance. I refrained from engaging in such conversations because I didn’t want to share an opinion without completely developing one. The divisiveness of political debate in the country had a role to play in this too; it made me squeamish.Â
But, events and experiences of the past year and half have pushed me off the fence. Pursuing a career in the arts and media in India, seeing people my age jailed for their Tweets and the deliberation I have to put into mine, the mismanagement of the 2nd wave of the pandemic and the soul crushing efforts it took to find my COVID ridden grandparents a hospital bed all had a role to play. I didn’t have a stand but I knew where I stood and I began to immerse myself in articles, podcasts and videos to deepen my feet in the sand.Â
I hadn’t realized the extent to which these feelings had festered until confronted about them in conversation. Their strength surprised me. I wasn’t forceful about my views but I began to express them. Still, I knew I lacked the understanding or perspective to see the entire picture but the polarization of opinion prevented that.Â
Day 2 at the Jaipur Literature Festival helped with that. While my first day was characterized by the sway of poetry and spoken word, day 2 was grounded in the realism of nation building and the direction the country was headed in. The sessions I attended gave me something my political understanding had been lacking; nuance.Â
The Republic of Hindutva, Nationhood, Patriotism and Deshbhakti, and The Essential Shashi Tharoor were some of the ones I attended. Barring the last one of course, I didn’t know the political leanings of the speakers in any of these sessions. That’s what made them so riveting. I could just listen to the words without focusing on the mouths they were being uttered from.Â
I’d find myself clapping along to speakers who stood on the end of the spectrum I identified with but I also caught myself vehemently agreeing with rebuttals their arguments received. It confused me. Which way do I lean? Do I need to lean completely to one side? Can Left and Right just be directions?Â
The conversations were heated but not bombastic in the way TV debates are. The friction on stage between the speakers for the Nationhood, Patriotism and Deshbhakti was palpable and uncomfortable even. But, I’ve realized all political debate is. For the first time, I didn’t feel the urge to shirk away from it. Ultimately, politics is about life and how people should lead theirs. So of course, there’s a flair to the language and flare in the emotions of its conversation.Â
In the Shashi Tharoor session, the host Vir Sanghvi asked him about what he’s noticed about the young people of the country participating in politics. Tharoor narrated an incident from an interaction he had with some school kids in Trivandrum who told him they had no interest in politics. ‘Well bad news, because politics has an interest in you’, he replied to them.Â