There’s nothing literary about the Jaipur Literary Festival. It’s as political as political is. The list of who’s who that make up its firmament year after year reads like the Forbes List of Liberal Fundamentalists. Perhaps Dalrymple’s List of Liberal Fundamentalists is a more accurate phrase. What “literature” have Shobaa De, Manil Suri, Pankaj Mishra, Ashis Nandy, Sonia Falerio, Suketu Mehta, Annie Zaidi, Anurag Mathur, and Tarun Tejpal written? Here’s a sample of the kind of “literary” discussions you get at that “festival:” political trash, milking the victimhood mammary, non-existent identity issues, gender nonsense, and the rest.
Festival of the Politically Correct Sissies: Part 2
Pick a name. Pick any name from the loathsome galaxy of the Politically Correct Sissies that I listed in the Part 1.
Let’s start with the head honcho, the White Mughal himself. Hartosh Singh Bal’s searing piece elicited the predictable accusation of racism from the stung Mughal. Bal called the Mughal’s racist bluff telling him he doesn’t know what racism really means. Badly beaten, the Mughal slunk away muttering a “regret.” School day lessons work: a bully will never bother you again if you hit back with equal or greater force.
Let’s pick another name. Girish Karnad. The man who famously led a tribe of followers to “protest” against the “saffronization/communalization” of Datta Peeta/Bababudangiri. The unsullied genteel extraordinaire in him trembled the moment he heard that cops planned to put him in jail as a preventive measure. He abandoned his anti-saffronization experiment instantly and dumped his Faithful Minions right at Hassan and fled back to Bangalore.
Let’s pick yet another name: Salman Rushdie, the dish that liberal fundamentalists of all hues across the world can neither spit nor swallow.
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