A major Indian literary festival chooses to partner with a corporate sponsor of dubious track record. The JLF Southbank festival is in London; a few weeks before it starts, a campaign asks writers to boycott the festival, citing Vedanta’s track record on tribal and adivasi rights.
Some campaigners trash the culture of literary festivals, calling them colonial; some make personal attacks on the organisers and writers who choose to attend. But these are distractions; the ethical questions the campaign raises are fundamental.
Where should a literary festival, which depends on corporate sponsorship, draw the line in its choice of partners? Should they seek professional advice on how to decide what makes a company a good, dubious or rogue corporate? Protests in the past against JLF sponsors have targetted a blanket array of organisations, from Coke and the DSC Group to the American Centre, so it is not as if all appeals to conscience are of equal merit.
Should authors join the boycott? Should they take no interest at all in these matters, arguing as some do that writing and the business of writing are separate things, or should they go to the festival and speak out against unethical practices? If they participate in one boycott, is it then their duty to question the corporate structure that underpins the publishing industry?
In 2002, Germaine Greer and Jim Crace pulled out of the Hay-on-Wye literary festival protesting Nestle’s involvement as a sponsor. Greer said: “I’m not leading a boycott, this was an entirely personal decision, but I will not take part in an event where a Nestlé banner is sported. If other people want to, then so be it, but I won’t.”
Nestlé’s marketing of powdered baby milk formula in Africa and other countries had triggered a corporate boycott of long-standing, which ran with some breaks from 1970 to the present date. The most prominent activist group behind the boycott is Baby Milk Action. In the boycott years, though, Nestlé also sponsored the very successful Smarties Book Prize from 1985 to 2007. Children from across the UK chose their favourite authors, which gave the prize a special appeal – its winners include Oliver Jeffers, Julia Donaldson and JK Rowling, who’s won the Smarties thrice.
Crace and Greer were not wrong to withdraw from Hay-on-Wye in protest over Nestlé, but neither were Rowling and the more than 60 writers who’ve won the Smarties wrong to accept the award. There was little controversy over Nestle’s sponsorship of the book prize, in part because the product – chocolate — does not set off the same debate as baby formula. With their gesture of protest, both Greer and Crace drew attention to Nestlé’s history, but they stopped short of demanding that other writers boycott the festival too.
In 2006, the writers John Berger, Arundhati Roy, Eduardo Galeano and Ahdaf Souief, among others, called for a cultural boycott of Israel in solidarity with Palestinian writers, teachers and film-makers.
This March, over 100 writers, from Susan Abulhawa and Hari Kunzru to Alice Walker and Junot Diaz, sent a letter to the PEN American Centre asking it to refuse support from the Israeli embassy for its annual World Voices festival.
In response, the chair of PEN’s World Voices Festival, Colm Toibin, wrote: “PEN and PWVF must always fall on the side of maximum protections for free expression. With that guiding principle in mind, PEN does not and cannot subscribe to cultural boycotts of any kind—which impede individual free expression—no matter the cause.“ The debate over the validity of cultural boycotts is not likely to die down any time soon.
The response from writers to the Vedanta sponsorship controversy has varied. Two writers, Aarathi Prasad and K Satchidanandan, are reported to have withdrawn over the anti-Vedanta protests. Many writers attended JLF Southbank despite the boycott call, including the transgender activist A Revathi, the novelist and poet Jerry Pinto, the historian Sunil Khilnani, Bangladeshi author Tahmima Anam, the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy.
Several made it clear that they agreed with the anti-Vedanta protestors, and some, including Salil Tripathi and Ruth Padel – attempted to talk about the history of the Niyamgiri protests, particularly relevant now against the background of fresh concerns over the possible erosion of tribal rights in Odisha. For JLF, the debate should – but might not — lead them and other cultural organizers to create a blacklist of companies they feel they can’t work with, and a parallel whitelist of corporations they feel they can defend.
One company might stir the conscience of writers for all the right reasons – as Mahesh Rao argued in a short but powerful appeal, sometimes a writer must ask, “How disgusting am I prepared to be?” Every writer has a personal line of conscience that they will not cross. But as the poet Karthika Nair pointed out, both ways of engaging with an issue might be equally powerful: “Sometimes, it is necessary to withdraw, as a mark of protest, just as it is sometimes necessary to be present to speak and raise one’s voice at that very platform.”
In India, the history of boycott calls over books, art and cinema is long and inflected with violence. Over the last decade, in 2006 Indian Muslim clerics and Christian groups joined forces to prevent screenings of The Da Vinci Code. In 2007, Bajrang Dal activists successfully boycotted the film Parzania; in 2014, Baba Ramdev called for a boycott of Amir Khan’s film PK, in 2015 VHP leader Sadhvi Prachi called for Hindus to boycott “films made by the Khans” (Amir, Shahrukh and Salman Khan). These are only a few of the many attempts made to ban, boycott or otherwise shut down art and cultural events, some of these calls accompanied by violence, some conducted as non-violent protests.
Given this history, I choose not to join in boycott calls myself – “those” protestors believe in the rightness and justice of their cause as much as “these” protestors do. But writers have many ways to protest – to speak at the venue, to stay away, or, even, as Gabriel Garcia Marquez did with the Banana Company in One Hundred Years of Solitude, make lasting art from their anger.
Boycotts are often swiftly forgotten, especially when they are ineffective, but Garcia Marquez branded United Fruit Company forever as the banana company that arrived, pursued by a leaf storm, sowing over the town “the rubble of many catastrophes that had come before it”. Along with all the other ways of protest, this was a classic example of how to put the power of negative advertising to work.
(Published in the Business Standard, 24 May 2016)
Know Your Sponsor: Vedanta
Selections from the many media stories on Vedanta, Niyamgiri and the Dongria Kondhs
2004: A mining controversy: Prafulla Das, Frontline
http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl2124/stories/20041203002004400.htm
2007: Mines of Trouble: Prafulla Das, Frontline
http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl2423/stories/20071207504204100.htm
Mining firms set up shop in Odisha, Maureen Nandini Mitra, Down To Earth
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/coverage/-mining-firms-set-up-shop-in-orissa-1810
2009: The Guardian, Gethin Chamberlain in Niyamgiri: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/oct/12/vedanta-versus-the-villagers
Vedanta AGM Report: London Mining Network:
http://londonminingnetwork.org/2009/08/vedanta-agm-report/
The heart of India is under attack: Arundhati Roy, The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/oct/30/mining-india-maoists-green-hunt
Mr Chidambaram’s war: Arundhati Roy, Outlook
http://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/mr-chidambarams-war/262519
2010:
Timeline: Vedanta mine imbroglio, Mint
http://www.livemint.com/Home-Page/TG5NrTlR5yBbDw8jq3QmpL/Timeline–Vedanta-mine-imbroglio.html
Tribals at Niyamgiri feel only half the battle won: Business Standard
Will Vedanta spare Niyamgiri? Sudeep Chakravarti, Mint
http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/b6rkiaK25kqkqyuVYtEQfI/Will-Vedanta-spare-Niyamgiri.html
Chronicling India’s protests: Sudhir Pattnaik, editor of Samadrusti, interviewed in The Hoot.org
http://www.thehoot.org/media-watch/regional-media/chronicling-orissa-s-protests-4767
2013:
Niyamgiri is a done deal: Sudeep Chakravarti, Mint
http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/jujWfo2P1w5vqrrhTGiEVO/Niyamgiri-is-a-done-deal.html
Indian villagers defeat British billionaire over plans to mine sacred mountain: Dean Nelson, The Telegraph
Battle for Niyamgiri: detailed updates from Down To Earth with special coverage, gram sabha reports etc
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/battle-for-niyamgiri-41744
Life and times of Lado Sikaka: Sayantan Bera, Down To Earth
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/life-and-times-of-lado-sikaka-42078
2014: RITIMO’s report: Claiming Niyamgiri: The Dongria Kondh’s struggle against Vedanta
http://www.ritimo.org/Claiming-Niyamgiri-the-Dongria-Kondh-s-Struggle-against-Vedanta
2015:
The Dongria Kondhs face a more formidable enemy than Vedanta: M Rajshekhar, Scroll.in
The mantra of mining companies: if you can’t stop pollution, hide it: M Rajshekhar, Scroll.in
http://scroll.in/roving/201/the-mantra-of-mining-companies-if-you-cant-stop-pollution-hide-it
Niyamgiri in focus, again: Sudeep Chakravarti, Mint
http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/70aXHxh04r0zpSa32ijbUL/Niyamgiri-in-focus-again.html
2016:
Vedanta wins country’s first gold mine auction in Chhattisgarh: R Krishna Das, Business Standard
Niyamgiri’s whiplash effect: Sudeep Chakravarti, Scroll.in
http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/piteI5UQ2nqWM2jnfvxTqJ/Niyamgiris-whiplash-effect.html
Supreme Court must safeguard tribal rights over Niyamgiri hills in Odisha:
Zubair Nazeer and Rahul Chirmurkar in The Wire
Mining at any Cost: The Odisha government’s continued dismissal of Adivasi rights: Chitrangada Choudhury, The Wire
Supreme Court quashes Odisha’s plea on Niyamgiri: Jayajit Dash, Business Standard
Withdraw paramilitary forces from Niyamgiri: NCHRO
http://odishachannel.com/index.php/6266/withdraw-paramilitary-forces-from-niyamgiri-nchro/
nilanjana s roy 
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