Winter is the season of literary festivals, with recently concluded Jaipur Festival leading the pack. Book fairs morphed into book festivals, writers’ conferences and now, literary or literature festivals. India, a late comer to this trend, has witnessed proliferation of festivals with some sprouting, even in smaller cities like Sangrur and Hoshiarpur. Festivals are natural counter to flagging attention of social media addicted millennials, their literary concerns restricted to WhatsApp and Twitter. Proliferation of Kindle, increasingly favoured by even die-hard readers and online portals like Flipkart and Amazon are literally sounding death knell for fairs. Festivals, on the other hand provide visitors an opportunity to get over the guilt, check out bucket list, yet imbibe some take-away variant of literature, without having to really read the books.

While most such events are generic, there are very few on specialised themes, notable ones being Delhi Poetry fest, Jashn-e-Rakhta (Urdu fest) and even Queer Litfest at Chennai. In regional milieu, Khuswant Singh Literature festival at Kasauli has become signature event with distinctive ‘liberal’ flavour. The event, this year, acquired international presence by travelling to London. Based on casual conversation during Kasauli festival, curators agreed to include one session dedicated to books on military subject. Finding great response, it seems to have now become permanent feature at Kasauli and most festivals, thanks to prevailing wave of nationalism.

The idea of exclusive military literary festival was boldly tried out by Western Command, aided by the generous backing of Times of India. The first-ever dedicated MilLitFest was organised on June 27 and 28, 2016, at Chandimandir. It was a two-day event with first day devoted to books on military themes, authors and commentators. The focus of the second day was on social media, bloggers and cyber security. The obvious drawback was limited civilian participation. However, defence studies departments of both Panjab and Punjabi Universities, serving officers and veterans attended in large numbers. It had a natural advantage of contemporary connect, but budgetary constraints and lack of support from higher HQ remained redoubtable challenges.

The idea spawned a school-level military history seminar, organised by Welhams Boys School, Dehradun, in 2016. This annual event now draws children from 30-odd premier schools, who are given an exposure through imaginatively curated interactive events promoting interest in national security. The concept owes its moorings to indulgent patron, Darshan Singh, military historian and master raconteur. Having attended seminars and conducting knowledge sessions in many institutions, the overall sense is that, there is lots of superficial ‘josh’, but unfortunately not backed by understanding and ‘hosh’. Pragmatic reality is that most children may not even opt for armed forces career, but many are likely to be future opinion makers. While we may not want compulsory military or national service, yet basic awareness about national security is imperative. It will be wonderful if more schools take up this onerous responsibility and the concept is taken to rural schools in Bharat.

The idea of Military Literature Festival at Chandigarh got worthy patronage by Governor V P Singh Badnore with enviable military family connect. It also found ready ownership by Punjab Government headed by Capt Amarinder Singh, who is acclaimed military historian, author of eight books. The enhanced and reformatted version of festival was organised as three-day event in Dec 2017. In its growth to recently organised third edition from December 14 to 17, event has acquired dimensions of mega military carnival. A number of curtain raiser events like polo match, vintage car rally, marathon and archery have got added. The idea of taking the event around the state has not found much traction with only isolated forays to Amritsar museum and polo matches at Patiala. This theme needs to be developed specially to tap potential of military tourism circuit to include Attari borders, museums and memorials, Amritsar, Anandpur Sahib, Khemkaran, Hussainiwala and other such places.

The festival in its three editions has become internationally acknowledged event under commendable stewardship of Lt Gen T S Shergill and Mandeep Bajwa. Very significant feature is, Clarion Call, connect with youth and children, orchestrated by Col Avnish Sharma. Event does serve to stimulate academic discussion among large veteran community and provides annual anti Alzheimer dose. Notwithstanding its growing fame, the relevant questions pertain to scale, participation and focus of the event. The other areas of concern are diminishing role of Western Command (real originators) and serving community, who were seen more in ceremonials and were conspicuous by their absence in intellectual parleys. This needs to be remedied with focus on contemporary themes and campaigns, prescribed for promotion exams syllabus. Participation of university students of defence studies departments needs to be enhanced. It will also be more manageable, if festival and carnival are separated as two linked events with carnival organised in different cities with odd panel discussion. The core litfest itself could do with at least 50% focus on book-based discussions. Unfortunately, book releases were most poorly attended events. The event, though organised in shared capital of Chandigarh, has very little institutionalised presence of Haryana, which needs to be enhanced in participation and management.

Like they say, imitation is the best form of flattery and healthy competition enhances quality. I have made humble beginning by floating proposal to convert annual book fair at Army War College, Mhow into military literature festival. Mhow being Mecca and Kashi for military knowledge seekers, with excellent museum and captive audience, is indeed the most suitable place to proliferate this wonderful concept among serving community.