The Jaipur Literature Festival has hosted Amartya Sen, Amitabh Bachchan, late A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, Bill Gates, His Holiness Dalai Lama, Oprah Winfrey, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Stephen Fry, Thomas Piketty, Ravish Kumar, Javed Akhtar, Gulzaar, Vir Sanghvi and former president of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai. Undoubtedly, JLF has become the most prestigious literature festival of World. In the 16th edition of JLF, S.S.Dogra-(Journalist, Author and Asst.Professor) took an exclusive interview of its Founder Director Sanjoy K.Roy at Hotel Clarks Amer Jaipur. Excerpts:
SSD: When you started Jaipur Literature Festival? How do you feel it now?
SKR: Dogra Ji, We started JLF for the first time 16 years ago. Every year it’s growing. People love the colour, hospitality, this is the place for celebration the colour & the culture.
SSD: Please let me know your background, promoting literature kind of things.
SKR: I have always been involved in the art. I am a theatre person. I used to run a theatre company with Barry John for theatre action group. From there, we started a television co.and theatre co.to get a job. So, we came back to the art in 1995 to look out and create a platform for all the rich culture, relations that we have after that rest is the history.
SSD: What’s the number of your team members?
SKR: We have a team of hundred people working officially round the year. During, JLF this year, we become a team of 4k people working together.
SSD: How many participants from different countries are participating in JLF-2023?
SKR: Over about 5k to 6k participants from South Africa, Australia, UK, USA, Japan, Bosnia, Spain, Portguel, Norway, Ireland etc.
SSD: What’s the exposure for Youth through JLF?
SRK: Before the festival and during the festival, we reached out to about 100 schools separately not the schools who are coming here. We have trained around three hundred volunteers from Jaipur, Rajasthan, Delhi-NCR.
SSD: Please tell me about the upcoming JLF-London.
SKR: JLF-London will be the 10th anniversary. It will be held in June’s second week. It will be mainly organized at British Library London although there are three venues in London. It will run Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
