The forthcoming Banaras Utsav will focus on regional languages and invite artistes from across the country. Iknoor Kaur gets the details
There is more to Varanasi than spirituality. This is the reason Gaurav Kapoor and a few others like him decided to come up with the cultural festival, Banaras Utsav, to highlight the unknown part of the place. As the organiser secretary of the festival, he says that the event will be an amalgamation of different kinds of art, culture and languages. “The idea is to bring together the rich culture of our country keeping Banaras as the main focus. We will have people from Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderabad,” he informs.
The festival was conceptualised a year and a half back. Kapoor explains, “There are a lot of cultural fests in India. However, most of them are very English-oriented. We wanted to provide a platform for languages like Hindi and other regional ones. In addition to that Banaras has always been culturally connected.”
Pt Rajan Mishra who belongs to the Banaras gharana will be one of the artistes performing at the event. He said that no other gharana in India had such a vast canvas of art and he is privileged to be a part of it. “In my life every festival has been important and in India so many festivals are celebrated. However, in Banaras, which is the cultural hub of our country, there is no cultural fest that takes place. This will be the first and through this fest I want to give one message to the country that every state must have a festival like this to preserve their heritage,” he adds.
Organiser of the festival, Ashok Kumar Gupta said that the event is also an attempt to revive Banarasi artifacts. “Banaras is home to over 40 per cent Bharat Ratna awardees in our country. There is art and culture in every single thing of the city. The city is famous for its saris, carving on elephant tusks and silver etchings. We want to showcase the richness of these arts through the fest,” he shares.
Upendra Kumar Gupta who is the co-organiser of the event stresses on the motivational factors of the festival. “We keep hearing of literature fests. So we thought of having a literature festival in Banaras which developed into becoming an art and culture festival. The main objective behind this was to promote reading habit among the youth. We also wanted to bring to forefront the music and musicians who have kept the Indian culture alive. We will highlight paintings and artefacts of Banaras and revive Hindi and Urdu poetry to encourage authors and those interested in literature. Our aim is also to attract tourists and show people what all Banaras has apart from spirituality.”
Since the idea behind the festival is to add to the goodwill of Banaras, Kapoor says that most of the artistes participating in the event waved off their fee. “We had a clear picture in our head as to what we wanted to do. So we went to Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderabad and spoke to people. Our idea was just to showcase the best in culture and help revive it. People liked this approach,” he shares.
The festival is being held over three and a half days from October 24 to 27. “On day one Amish Tripathi will be giving a talk on mysticism and lord Shiva while on day three there will be a lecture by MJ Akbar on whether religion should be included in school curriculum in India. These should be the highlights of the event apart form Gulzar’s famous play being staged called Paansa. Apart from these events we also have a rock band performance by Swarathma on the last day and heritage walks through all three days. The event will be free for all,” Kapoor sums up.