JLF co-director William Dalrymple: ‘Whatever one’s political beliefs, whether they support this government or not, we have not been under any pressure’

Author and historian William Dalrymple is co-director of Jaipur Literature Festival.

Even as literary festivals crop up all across the country and beyond in South Asia, the biggest of them all — the Jaipur Literature Festival which started in 2006 - is gearing up to enter its 17th edition next year. Literary geniuses and pathbreaking thinkers as well as literature enthusiasts will make their way to Jaipur in the first week of February to engage in thought-provoking conversations and to listen to over 300 prominent speakers across four venues. At the Mumbai preview of the festival held recently, author and co-director William Dalrymple who has a new book The Golden Road coming up around September next year, shared his thoughts on JLF. Edited excerpts from an interview:

Before the 2023 edition, you had mentioned in a note on the festival’s website that ‘2023 will undoubtedly be our finest festival yet’. If 2023 was the finest, what do you have to say about 2024?

2024 is definitely going to be our finest! (laughs) They just keep on getting bigger and better. Genuinely, what’s worked with me as a director sending invitations for the festival is how easy it has become for people to come to JLF. People now rearrange their calendars to fit us in, however late in the day it is and that’s wonderful. That was definitely not the case when we started out. It took a long time to reach this.

Give us a little overview of what the literature loving audience can expect at the festival?

My colleague Namita Gokhale handles the South Asian list. My effort is to try and get the big names, Booker Prize winners etc. Among the prominent speakers, there is Damon Galgut, 2021’s Booker Prize winner, British writer Monica Ali, American novelist Katie Kitamura, Katherine Rundell who is the biggest non-fiction children writing star, Amia Srinivasan, amazing historians such as Simon Shama, Peter Frankopan, Tom Holland and Marie Beard. We have Patrik Radden Keefe who is probably the most prominent writer on investigative journalism. He’s the guy who exposed the Opioid crisis, faced innumerable lawsuits and won a Pulitzer at the end of it, Colin Thubron who is probably the greatest travel writer alive and popular writer Bonnie Garmus who wrote Lessons in Chemistry among others.

The Jaipur Literature Festival started in 2006. What according to you has been its biggest achievement?

I think there are nearly 6000 literary festivals across South Asia and we were the first. Most of them are great! I am very proud that we brought this here and I am not surprised because South Asia has an incredible tradition of performance and literature. We did not bring in something new from outside; we just ignited something that was ready to go off! And it’s now by a long way, the biggest in the world.

What is the biggest challenge, especially at a time when there is so much scrutiny over writers and free thinkers, to organise a literature festival?

The only way I strongly feel a political hold is that we can’t bring Pakistani writers anymore. Otherwise, I don’t feel we are at the end of a gun or something. Whatever one’s political beliefs, whether they support this government or not - we have not been under any pressure. We have carried on doing what we have been doing. The only difference I feel is that we have been clearly told we can’t bring Pakistani authors and we have to live with that.

You have spent almost two decades researching and writing about the East India Company, resulting in four books – The Anarchy, White Mughals, Return of a King and The Last Mughal. Why did you feel it deserved that much time and effort from you and has it been worth it?

It wasn’t planned and I may well return with two or three more! In the last 20 years, there has been a reawakening of the sense that colonialism is an important thing to be reevaluated and looked at. These books were not just about colonial history but about corporations taking over the world and that has never been a more contemporary topic than now. So, for once in my life, I thought I was way ahead of the curve.