3rd edition of Samanvay IHC Indian Languages Festival 2013 announced

Exclusive Festival on Indian Languages, 20 languages & dialects, more than 90 speakers

New Delhi, 9th October 2013: The third edition of the India Habitat Centre (IHC) Indian Languages’ Festival ‘Samanvay’ is scheduled to take place during October 24 – 27, 2013. This year the festival’s theme is ‘Jodti Zubanein, Judti Zubanein: Language Connections’. Spread over four days, the festival would witness 7 Padma Shri awardees, 12 Sahitya Akademi recipients, 5 National Film Award winners, a Padma Bhushan and Oscar Award winner. 20 languages and dialects would be premiered/ featured at Samanvay 2013.

‘Samanvay’ is a platform for bringing together expressions of human thought in the varied and diverse cultural contexts that have been nurtured and have flourished in many languages spoken in our cultural milieu. These conversations amongst brilliant and well-known writers will seek to bring to our audiences the sparkle of multilingual expressions and their inspirations.

Samanvay 2013 is about connections between languages and the connections languages make: Jodti Zubanein, Judti Zubanein. This is a continuum of the themes that defined the first two editions of the festival; the inaugural an exercise in understanding the notion of the Indian-ness of the various literatures of the country, the second a celebration of the multi-faceted interaction between languages and dialects. It is not only about listeners, readers and authors; it is also about the ethics and ethos of connecting through a language.

Get ready for conversations around oral literature, media, and translations, along with poetry performances, folk art, stand-up comedy, theatre and cultural evenings. Beyond the language specific sessions, we cover some of the issues that have shaped our intellectual and social life in recent times: sessions on civil society, activism, dalit and women writing, alternative voices from literature, cinema, radio, publishing, gender violence, aspirations, dreams and voices of the marginalized, and above all the threats of a new form of patriotism that treats itself as a religion.

This year too we are going to have with us a select panel of authors, lyricists, film-makers, media personalities, activists and performers. Some of the names are Anupam Mishra, Gulzar, Jerry Pinto, Ketan Mehta, Mahesh Bhatt, Mukul Kesavan, Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, Piyush Mishra, Ravish Kumar, Sharda Sinha, Sanjay Kak, Shashi Deshpande, Shuddhbrata Sengupta and Varun Grover.

The sessions would have reputed personalities as well as brave new voices that are increasingly making a space for themselves: Ashwini Kumar Pankaj, Anvita Abbi, Arjun Deo Charan, A. Jayaprabha, Arunesh Neeran, B.M. Hanif, Bhagwan Singh, C. P. Deval, Himashi Shelat, Kedarnath Singh, Kancha Ilaiah, K. Sivareddy, Manoranjan Byapari, Narendra Kohli, Nivedita Menon, Nand Kishore Acharya, Nirupama Dutt, N.D.Rajkumar, Pravin Pandya, Rooprekha Verma, Sylvanus Lamare, Surjeet Patar, Sitanshu Yashashchandra, Sushma Asur, Tenzin Tsundue, Udaya Narayana Singh, Viveka Rai and and many more prolific speakers.

Announcing the festival, Mr Raj Liberhan, Festival Director, Samanvay, said, “For us at the India Habitat Centre, Samanvay is not an event but a cause. All of us in this country find ways of translating our thoughts into words. Samanvay is a multilingual platform to debate, share and ideate on issues affecting us.”

Elaborating on Samanvay 2013, Mr Satyanand Nirupam, Creative Director, Samanvay, said, “This year’s theme goes beyond the literary and cultural connections across languages and encompasses the connections between divergent media of expression, i.e., literature, cinema, music, between various ideologies and of course between languages and dialects. Samanvay also reaches out for a connection valuable for the shared history of the subcontinent. Samanvay is an honest attempt that focuses exclusively on Indian languages instead of only showcasing them.”

Sharing his thoughts Mr Giriraj Kiradoo, Creative Director, Samanvay, spoke: “Samanvay 2013 is bigger not just in terms of speakers and sessions but also in terms of their diversity and the various sub-themes that run through the festival guided this year by the idea of the magical connections languages can make and the inevitable hierarchies they create. Samanvay like before is in a new zone, of difficult but rewarding dialogues across languages, dialects, ideologies, mediums and strategies.”

Book exhibitions with special sale offers for Samanvay participants would be put up by the National Book Trust, Delhi Press, Pratilipi Books, Hind Pocket Books, Full Circle, Rajkamal Prakashan, Vani Prakashan and many others publishers. All the programmes would take place at the India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi. Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SamanvayIhcIndianLanguagesFestival

About Samanvay: IHC Indian Languages’ Festival
Samanvay has been conceived as an annual celebration of writing in Indian languages. The festival has aimed at generating dialogue across Indian languages at various levels and has emerged as the only literature festival dedicated exclusively to Indian languages.

The inaugural edition (2011) tried to explore the politics of bringing various literatures under the master signifier, ‘Indian’, and to understand the mysterious bond that makes them at once distinct and collective. In 2012, the festival moved on to discover the heritage of Indian languages through the strain of ‘Boli, Baani, Bhasha: Gaon, Kasba, Shehar’.

The first two editions of the festival featured 20 languages presented by an eminent group of writers including contemporary masters like Kunwar Narain, Sitakant Mahapatra, Chandrasekhar Kambar, Ratan Thiyam, K. Satchidanandan, Ashok Vajpeyi, Alok Rai, Sheen Kaaf Nizam, Girish Kasaravalli, Pratibha Ray, Nabaneeta Dev Sen, Gopalkrishna Pai, Kashinath Singh, Laxman Gaikwad, Nabarun Bhattacharya, Rajendra Yadav, Mangalesh Dabral, Yumlembam Ibomcha, Radhavallabh Tripathi, Arun Kamal and Mamang Dai. Samanvay’s festival director is Mr Raj Liberhan and the creative directors are Satyanand Nirupam and Giriraj Kiradoo.