India and South Africa in conversation

Poetry, performance, politics and publishing are among the topics for the fourth Words on Water literary festival bringing together SA and Indian writers.

The event, part of Shared History - The Indian Experience festival, takes place on September 25 at the Turbine Hall in Newtown. Entrance is free.

Readings, book signings, talks and discussions will provide an opportunity to interact with the writers.

The programme kicks off at 10am on Saturday September 25 with a lively panel on poetry and performance. It draws together one of India's most distinguished poets Arvind Krishna Mehrotra with Pitika Ntuli, the sculptor, academic and poet and Lebo Mashile, the brilliant performance poet.

Sunil Khilnani, one of the most influential commentators on India will be joined by academic Ivor Chipkin to discuss South Africa and India now. Khilnani's The Idea of India is one of the most influential introductions to contemporary India. It has been widely translated and has gone into several editions. Khilnani is currently Professor of South Asian Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Full report here Artslink.co.za

The reading life - Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar

As another August 15 passes by, here’s a thought: what would our country have been like if the leaders of the freedom movement had not been readers?

It’s easier to see them as writers. Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiographies, letters and other work have provided gainful occupation for thousands of scholars. Pandit Nehru, incarcerated in jail, bereft of reference books, set pen to paper and produced The Discovery of India, Glimpses of World History and Letters From A Father To His Daughter. B R Ambedkar’s Who Were The Shudras, Castes in India and the autobiographical Waiting For A Visa still hold the attention of readers.

And it is their progression as writers that historians and thinkers like Ramachandra Guha and Sunil Khilnani have written about. But to study the libraries of India’s leaders is to realise how relentlessly, and sometimes restlessly, all of them, from Maulana Abul Kalam Azad to Sarojini Naidu, read as a way of understanding the values by which India would be formed.

Gandhi came to English uneasily; the alien tongue made him a virtual prisoner of silence on his shipboard journey to England. In South Africa, as a lawyer who had got over his initial fear of speaking in public, he put together a formidable and eclectic library.

Full report here Sify