THE ORDERING OF LITERATURE

JAIPUR LITERATURE FESTIVAL: If the ethical ground of a literary festival is compromised, it will simply turn into a politically correct festival
Manash Bhattacharjee Delhi

We are described into corners, and then we must describe ourselves out of corners.
― Salman Rushdie

A spectre is haunting The Jaipur Literature Festival. Not the spectre of a man called Salman Rushdie, but a spectre which has always denied and refused Rushdie's most controversial but brilliant book its rightful place in the bookshelves in this country. The spectre is that of law. The organisers of the Festival have given a new description of law: like all four-walled rooms, the law is a confining boundary with four strict corners. Literature can only exist deferentially within the demands of these four corners. If literature transgresses the four corners of the law, it is liable to punishment.

The four corners of the law which surround the Jaipur Literature Festival have nothing to do with literature except reminding literature of its limits. By giving a new description of law, the organisers have also furnished, by default, a new definition of literature: literature is a credible activity but defensible only within the four walls of the law. What literature thinks of the law is itself bound by the law, and no stretch of literary imagination can dare to transgress that holy boundary. If literature tries to push the boundary, it is said to play foul and the attempt is declared unacceptable.

In the corporate language of the organisers, writers and other participants are "delegates" who have to comply by legal norms. The moment a writer is termed a delegate, his identity becomes bound to an organisation. The writer can no longer demand certain aesthetic rights in this formalised responsibility of being a delegate. This ensures an organisational hold over the writer's rights, and he can no longer represent merely himself or his craft. Between the writer and his craft falls the organisational shadow, which is guarded by the larger shadow of the law.

Literature is always guilty of a secret tendency of defying the law. This secret becomes an open threat when four writers read passages of a banned book

We are inside Plato's allegory of the cave, where nothing seems to be the way it is. Literature is being foreshadowed, shadowed and overshadowed by law. The allegory of the cave slips into Kafka's parable. Like K., literature has to seek permission from the guards to disprove its crime.