India is Fast becoming Asia's Art & Literary Hub by Abhay K

India is fast becoming Asia's art and literary hub. India Art Summit and Jaipur Literary Festival are two significant art and literary events that took place back to back this January in India's capital Delhi and Jaipur respectively. Jaipur, also known as the Pink City, is located 281 kilometers from the national capital Delhi in the Western India state of Rajasthan. Delhi and Jaipur along with Agra, where the famous Taj Mahal is located, form the Golden Triangle of India's tourist hotspots.


India Art Summit started in 2009 while Jaipur Literary Festival started in 2006. Since then both the events have been gaining wide popularity in India and abroad. These are two pan-Indian events that bring together art collectors, artists, curators, art-critics, publishers, writers, poets, book-lovers from all over India with many foreign visitors.

This year India Art Summit showcased works of 84 galleries from India and abroad (from 20 countries) under 8,500 square feet of space at New Delhi's premier exhibition space Pragati Maidan from January 21-23. The event had additional attractions such as Sculpture's Park and special Video Lounge besides the exhibition space.

The first India Art Summit attracted 10,000 visitors and this time the event witnessed a much higher turnout.

Jaipur Literary Festival, proclaimed to be Asia-Pacific's largest literary event, ran for five days long at the 19th century mansion Diggi Palace, beginning January 21st. Many luminaries of the literary world were present at the event. Nobel Laureates in Literature Orhan Pamuk & J.M. Coetzee were a great attraction, as were the icons of the Indian film industry Gulzar & Javed Akhtar, Booker Prize winner Kiran Desai, and great literary figures such as Vikram Seth, Ian McEwan among others. The event drew a large crowd of literature lovers.

India is fast becoming the publishing hub of the world with many large publishing houses such as Cambridge University Press, Random House and others setting up their offices in India.

India's burgeoning art market has led to the foundation of an Indian online auction house Saffronart in 2000 on the lines of Sotheby and Christie.

India's art and literary scene looks vibrant and growing at unprecedented pace. This certainly adds to India's traditional soft power that comes from its ancient civilization, dynamic democracy, its amazing geographical and cultural diversity, unparalleled Bollywood and re-energized world of Yoga & Ayurveda.

What is literature?

What is literature? This question came to my mind when a colleague commented about my poems-"I can't say that your poems have any literary value but they are instant expression of human emotions..." This comment made me think ;what is literature? Do I write to express myself, to pour out what is on my mind; or to consciously make literary contributions?

So I did my search and came upon this definition of literature- "Literature is a term used to describe written or spoken material"- Esther Lombardi, About.com
The word literature did not come to designate the body of imaginative text till the late 18th century. In Latin Littera means letters and as etymology suggests literature is anything written.

So I became happy for a while, deriving meaning of literature from its etymology and the definition of literature by Lombardi but my happiness did not last very long. I soon came upon another definition by Erza Pound-" Literature is the news that stays relevant" meaning those works of art or imagination that will be read years from now. Now this one is a gray area. How do we know then which books are great pieces of literature and which ones are not? It can be decided many years later only.

So I got further confused what constitutes literature and what not?

More search led me to the following definition by McFadden-

Literature is a canon which consists of those works in language by which a community defines itself through the course of its history.

According to this definition one has to wait for many years for the community to decide if it would identify with the work of writer A or B.

Now let's look at some more definitions-
In a 1877 article in New York Times, Mr. Stopford Brooke says-"By literature we mean written thoughts and feelings of intelligent men and women arranged in a way which will give pleasure to the reader."

Some other viewpoints-

Professor Barry Laga - What is literature ?
Patrick Galloway- What is literature?
Myron Magnet- What use is Literature?
Stopford Brooke - What is Literature (pdf)

It seems that it is difficult to define "Literature" and therefore I would not like to wander in the vast universe of Literature but continue writing as well as I can, expressing my thoughts and feelings without bothering if they will be read after many years from now or not; or become part of the canon by which any society will identify.

I write because I can't do without it.

Some related Books-
"What is Literature and other essays" by John Paul Satre
Hindu Literary Review on Satre's book- 'What is Literature'