By Sanjeev Chopra
Words are the only victors! Mark your register for the pan- India VoW.
August, the eighth month of the year, has indeed brought it its wake good auguries for the eighth edition of VoW! Team VoW called on Lt Gen Gurmit Singh (Retd), the Governor of Uttarakhand on 6 August, and on Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, the next day, and received their in-principle confirmations for the inauguration and valediction of the signature event of eighth edition of VoW scheduled for 16-17 November. Of the books presented to the Governor, he expressed keen interest in The Victory City by Salman Rushdie, and in his own inimitable way, he read out the most relevant extract:
I have lived to see an empire rise and fall.
How are they remembered now, these kings, these queens?
They exist now only in words . . .
I myself am nothing now. All that remains is this city of words.
Words are the only victors.
Team VoW also briefed Chief Minister Dhami about significant highlights, especially the Lead@VoW inter-generational connect to link the eight knowledge institutions of Doon with select schools. Thus, Survey of India has been tied up with Doon International School, the National Hydrographic Office with Jaswant Modern Senior Secondary School, the Forest Research Institute with Gyananda, Wildlife Institute with St Kabeer Academy, Swami Rama Himalayan University with Mount Fort Academy, Dwijendra Nath Sen Memorial Centre with Him Jyoti, the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology with The Tons Bridge School, and last, but not the least, the Sakya College with Kasiga School.
This, along with an INTACH curated exhibition of eight museums of Uttarakhand, eight sessions based on Book Awards and eight book launches for the citizens of Dehradun will make it a festival of literature and arts in the truest sense of the term. But then, VoW is growing and reaching out to newer geographies and niche demographics, thereby making it a Dehradun based pan India festival. Our vision is to take VoW authors to institutions and audiences where their genre and learning would be appreciated and vice versa. Our curated list is drawn exclusively from authors who have participated in VoW events: the Book Awards, Afternoons with an Author, Author from the Valley or Candid Conversation. So, while all award-winning authors do come to the signature event, the wider circle travels to different institutions across the country to ensure that learning, critical questioning, and lateral thinking strikes deeper roots.
Come September
There are three major milestones to be accomplished in September. We have the G-Literati at Indore, Shabdavali – the Hindi Knowledge vertical- at the Graphic Era Group of Institutions and the announcements of the REC VoW Awards.
Let’s begin with G -Literati. Readers may be aware that, over the last three years, VoW has collaborated with our partners – the AFS Schools and Daly College Indore for sessions on ‘Writings for Young Adults’ at Daly College Indore on 2 September. The Dehradun connect cannot be missed for Principal Gunmeet Bindra, who was earlier helming the Welham Boys School for several years before she moved to one of the most prestigious boarding schools of India, where she also makes it a point to invite many AFS affiliated schools from across the country, thereby making it a true meeting of young minds willing to engage in conversations about their country, and the steps necessary for leading India to the pole position by 2047.
VoW will celebrate the Hindi Pakhwara (fortnight) in the second week of September by inviting fifteen authors in each of the three categories of Hindi Fiction, non-fiction, and translations from the Bhashas of Bharat into Hindi. The books include biographies, critical commentaries, poems, plays, adaptations and translations. Some sessions are dedicated to Nari Shakti – and books related to empowerment and gender equality will be discussed. Graphic Era will also be organising exhibitions of visual and creative arts as well as performances by the leading folk artists of the state.
On the last day of the month, viz September 30, we will make the much-awaited announcements of the eight winners – this will then set the ball rolling for the signature event. All the eight winners, who have won the stage for their command over words, will be in intense conversations with readers and critics who would have read the books well in advance – our forte lies in giving the authors an engaged readership for nuanced conversations.
The three events in October
October will also be a very busy month for VoW. On the first Sunday of the month, we will celebrate the best of children’s writings at Dehradun’s Him Jyoti School, where children will render these offerings as skits, recitals, short plays, poems and in their myriad sartorial expressions. Soon thereafter, the VoW team moves to Indus School and the Flame University of Pune with our select authors dealing with issues concerning young people and their expectations about the future of our country. There is a Dehradun connect here as well, for the Principal, Sandeep Chhabra, is also the ex-Principal of Kasiga. Our Iti Nritya curator Shalini Rao will also be holding the workshop on Indian knowledge and heritage with the schools of Pune.
Another interesting tie up this year is with the South Asian University, the MEA supported university based out of New Delhi. Discussions will focus on the common heritage and the civilisational connect in the sub-continent. From the Ramayana and the Mahabharat to the GT Road and common strategies to address issues of growth and development in line with the SDGs of the UN, the VoW@SAU will feature our award wining author Rajiv Dogra, besides TCA Raghavan, Tilak Deveshar, Debashis Mitra, Bharat Thakker, Lalit Mansingh, C Raja Mohan, and a cultural programme from the Mohini Foundation. An exhibition of award-winning books, and philately, from across the SAARC nations will be another important aspect of this endeavour.
Post our signature event in November, we will proceed to Chennai in December where, together with the Chennai International Centre, we are organising a session on Translations from Bhashas of Bharat into English, besides works from our fiction and non-fiction categories and the two verticals of children and young adults. But before we close the calendar year, we would have made the announcement for the REC VoW book Awards 2025, a very special year, for this will mark the Silver Jubilee of Uttarakhand!
Sanjeev Chopra (born 3 March, 1961) is a retired IAS officer of the 1985 batch, from Kapurthala, Punjab. He is a resident of Dehradun. He is a former Director of the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration and has written a book, “We, the People of the States of Bharat: The Making and Remaking of India’s Internal Boundaries”, published in 2022. He is now the patron and honorary consultant to a literary festival, the Valley of Words International Literary Festival, held annually in Dehradun. Chopra has held the Hubert H Humphrey Fellowship (Cornell), the Robert S McNamara Fellowship (World Bank) and positions at Royal Asiatic Society, London, the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute (Harvard).
