Writers bring sanity, says Vice-President Hamid Ansari

NEW DELHI: Vice-President Hamid Ansari stressed India’s “plural ethos” as he inaugurated the first edition of the Times LitFest at the Maidens Hotel, Civil Lines, on Saturday. He described the event as a “people’s festival”.
“Writers are inheritors of a very old, rich and multifaceted tradition — the role of inducing sanity in an increasingly maddening world,” he told the gathering.This was a critical role in this day and age. A well-developed literary tradition is the hallmark of every civilization, he said. India claims one of the oldest literary traditions in the world and has unmatched diversity in a multitude of languages and cultural patterns. “This is refl ective of our plural ethos that has accommodated and enriched a variety of impulses and infl uences,” he added.
Unveiling the offi cial festival logo, Ansari said: “This event…is a people’s festival covering the entire spectrum of ideas from scholarship to social media, high art to street expressions, from dastangoi to budding novelists, and from fi lm to sports. It aspires to be the bridge between the ivory tower and the town hall.”
When tolerance is the subject du jour, he said the sense of unity that pervades the fabric of Indian society is intangible and refl ects the continuum of our literary traditions. While India has nurtured a long literary diversity, Delhi, its principal city, has been a crucible of multiplicity. Raj Jain CEO, The Times Group, said the city has a rich literary heritage to which Amir Khusro, Ghalib, Amrita Pritam, Faiz Ahmad Faiz and others are contributors. It was fi tting, he noted, that the city of literature should have an ambitious literary festival. C K Sharma, business head of the mouth fresheners division, D S Group, whose brand Rajnigandha is the primary festival sponsor, said literature helps decode a nation’s social and economic reality.
“Young people should be encouraged to come to literature,” he said, quoting Nadine Gordimer’s observation that writing makes sense of life.
The Times LitFest is presented by DS Group’s Rajnigandha. Official bookstore: Full Circle Writing Instruments Partner: Parker Mobility Partner: Uber