As Nalsar University of Law kicks off its first literary festival, we go behind the scenes to talk to the students who put in over six months of hard work to make the festival a grand one. The ongoing student-run initiative has big names like Urvashi Butalia, Amit Chaudhari and more coming in for panel discussions.
While they already had a course “Law and Literature”, the students were intrigued to know more. “It made us think about how literature plays a role in shaping law. Literature, with or without direct intentions, has had a hand in challenging the law. We have a literary and debating committee too and students are interested in reading and writing more. That was the primary premise for holding the festival,” says Anna Liz Thomas, one of the core-committee members.
When they got the idea, getting it approved from the authorities was a piece of cake. “Being in a law school, people usually associate the events to be all about mooting or debating. But we wanted more,” says Raji Gururaj, another committee member. For about six months, the core committee members, which co-incidentally were all girls, found themselves in the hostel discussing ideas even at 3 am. “We are all in the same campus and this is the first time all of us are organising an event. We aimed big, we wanted it to be something that pertains to law, yet interests all,” says Raji.
Thus came the central theme for the Festival Literature and Dissent, and the sub-themes for panel discussions ranging around topics like Protest Movements and the Arts, Post Independence Literature: Unravelling Partition and Emergency Narratives, etc.
The next difficult part was finding funding. “I don’t even remember how many people we approached, but they denied saying a literary festival had nothing in it for them. But eventually, everything fell into place,” says Raji.Now, the campus is buzzing with energy as they gear up for the last day of the festival with panel discussions by Amit and Urvashi.
