Kashmir Lit Festival: Come summer, top-notch writers, filmmakers will make beeline to valley

SRIINAGAR: Come summer, top-notch writers and flimmakers will descend on Kashmir to participate in the first-of-its-kind Literary Festival.

Jammu and Kashmir government is planning to host the `Kashmir Literary Festival’ on the lines of the Jaipur Lit Festival to boost tourism.

“We are thinking to start a literary festival. It will be an annual affair. It will help in changing the perceptions about Kashmir,” Sarmad Hafiz, secretary tourism, told The Kashmir Monitor.

Tourism department is planning to invite top writers in a bid to send a positive message across the world. 

“Earlier, we hosted several Lit festivals in Kashmir. We had one festival in Gulmarg. Later we hosted the regional Lit Festival at Patnitop. We are trying to upscale these festivals. The one we plan will be grand  This is the perfect place that can inspire people to write,” Sarmad said.

Earlier in October, the first-ever Kumaon Literary Festival was held in Kashmir. The two-day festival, which hosted authors and film personalities from different parts of the country, was held at the SKICC on the banks of the Dal Lake. Writers and speakers from different parts of the country shared their views on varied topics. The two-day festival concluded with a book discussion on ‘The Mystic and the Lyric: Four Women Poets from Kashmir’.

The Lit Festival is being planned to cash in on the feel-good factor created after the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB)  revealed that Jammu and Kashmir has registered zero cases of crime against foreigners. “There was no case of violence, sexual assault, rape, forgery, theft, and cheating reported from Jammu and Kashmir against the foreigners who visited the region in 2021,” the report said.

In fact, 2022 has been a golden year for Kashmir tourism. . More than 2.2 million tourists including Amarnath Yatris visited Kashmir last year. It is for the first time that tourists have arrived in all four seasons in Kashmir. Earlier bulk of the tourists was visiting during summer to beat the heat. This year, tourists visited in spring, autumn, and winter too.

“Apart from the Lit festival, we have planned different events to ensure that tourists will have the best experience in Kashmir this spring and summer,” said Sarmad.