Let’s try to converse, disagree without being disagreeable: Pranab Mukherjee

“Use the power of your words in these increasingly fractured, fragmented times, when we spend a lot of time talking at each other instead of talking to each other” — former President Pranab Mukherjee underlined the importance of debate as well as decorum as he inaugurated the fourth edition of

Times

Litfest Delhi at the

India Habitat Centre

on Saturday.

Mukherjee lit the “lamp of knowledge” and, in his opening statement, said, “This is a unique literary festival of ideas that addresses contemporary concerns. Festivals like this have been at the forefront of revitalising the interest of the young, technologically driven generation, towards the fine world of literature.”

“In this age of technological evolution,” he added, “everyone has a platform to give a piece of his or her mind with the safety of anonymity. It gives a free pass without any accountability. The casualties are decency, decorum and truth. We must strive to have a conversation.”

‘Create a culture of debate and discussion’
Ex-President Pranab Mukherjee said: “The beauty of debate and dissent is that we can disagree without being disagreeable, we can ideologically oppose and still be friends.” Referring to literature as the lifeblood of society and a mirror of its “stance and challenges, its anxieties and its possibilities”, Mukherjee invoked Edward Bulwer-Lytton to reassert the significance of the words, “the pen is mightier than the sword”.

In a word of advice to audiences at Times

Litfest

Delhi, presented by Rajnigandha, he said, “As well-read individuals, you have the responsibility to generate a culture of debate and discussion. Instead of constructing walls, try to build bridges.”

In a lighter vein, Mukherjee said he was unsure, when he first received an invitation to inaugurate the festival, whether he was qualified to do so. “I am not a creative creature in the sense that I have authored some books, but they are not creative products of a creative mind. They are narrations of my experiences in politics over the last six decades of which I was a part, mostly with an ineffective side role, and occasionally, at the centre of the stage. But perhaps it will not be immodest if I claim I am a leader.”