|
| |
THIRD ANNUAL IAAC LITERARY FESTIVAL
NYU KIMMEL CENTER, 60 WASHINGTON SQUARE SOUTH, NYC
|
| OCTOBER 7-9, 2016 |
| |
| Saturday Oct 8, 2016 3:45 pm - 4: 45 pm |
|
| |
| Session 4A -This Unquiet Land: Stories from India's Fault Lines |
 |
| Barkha Dutt in conversation with Suketu Mehta |
| In her debut book, journalist Barkha Dutt reveals the truth about the most complex society on earth - India - its secrets and lies; its heroes and villains. Are her "fault lines" too black and white? |
| |
|
| |
| Barkha Dutt |
Barkha Dutt, one of India’s most prominent journalists and television anchors, became a household name with her reporting from the front lines during the Kargil conflict between India and Pakistan in 1999. In addition to her war reporting (from countries as varied as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt and Libya), in India she has reported from the field on virtually every important national story - politics, insurgencies, social upheavals, floods and famine. She has won more than forty national and international honours for her work.
Barkha Dutt is Consulting Editor with NDTV, India's premier news network. She is one of India's best-known journalists and the youngest to receive ‘Padma Shri’, one of India’s highest State honours. In her twenty-year career, she has covered several conflict zones, including Kashmir, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt and Libya. Barkha has interviewed a range of personalities around the world and at home including Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Nawaz Sharif, Bill and Melinda Gates, Tony Blair, Aung San Suu Kyi, Hamid Karzai, Malala Yousafzai, Kailash Satyarthi, His Holiness The Dalai Lama, Indra Nooyi and Salman Rushdie. She hosts India’s longest-running talk show ‘We The People’ and a daily primetime show ‘The Buck Stops Here’. Last year, her coverage of the Kashmir floods became the first Indian series to be nominated for the International Emmy Awards in the News category. Barkha is active on Twitter (@bdutt) where she is followed by over 4 million people. She has now turned entrepreneur with her own multimedia content company.
In a career spanning two decades, she has won over fifty national and international awards for journalism including the Global Leader for Tomorrow award by the World Economic Forum, the Commonwealth Broadcasters' award for 'Journalist of the Year' and the Asian Television Awards for ‘Best News Presenter or Anchor’ (2015), ‘Best Current Affairs Presenter’ (2012) and ‘Best Talk Show’ (2006, 2010 & 2014). Last year, her daily primetime show The Buck Stops Here became the first Indian TV show to be nominated for the International Emmy Awards in the News category. In 2012, she won ‘International TV Personality of the Year’ at the Association for International Broadcasting awards in London. In 2014, she also won News Television Award for Best TV News Anchor (English) for a second year in a row. She has also bagged Indian Television Academy award for Best Talk Show for five consecutive years. |
| |
| Unquiet Land |
 One of the most remarkable books ever published about contemporary India, arguably the most complex society on earth, This Unquiet Land tells the truth about the country's secrets and lies, its torments and triumphs and its heroes and villains. This is the first book by Barkha Dutt, India's best known journalist. India's fault lines run wide and deep. Some of them go back centuries, others are of comparatively recent origin. The myriad villains these fault lines have spawned include rapists, murderers, terrorists, prophets of religious hatred, corrupt politicians, upholders of abhorrent caste traditions, opponents of free speech and dissent, apologists for regressive cultural practices and external adversaries who try to destabilize our borders.
Some of them go back centuries, others are of comparatively recent origin. The myriad villains these fault lines have spawned include rapists, murderers, terrorists, prophets of religious hatred, corrupt politicians, upholders of abhorrent caste traditions, opponents of free speech and dissent, apologists for regressive cultural practices, and external adversaries who try to destabilize our borders. All of them are responsible for impeding the country’s progress, destroying the lives of numberless innocents, usually the poorest and most vulnerable of our people, and besmirching the democratic, plural, free and secular nature of our society.
Set against these enemies of our nation’s promise are the heroic ones - the poor, illiterate woman who was gang-raped but helped change the nation’s attitude towards women through her determined fight for justice; the young soldier whose courage and sacrifice in the high Himalayas was an inspiration to his comrades fighting the Kargil War; the wife whose husband was beheaded by Maoist terrorists, yet sought not revenge but succour for the poor and underprivileged; and the son of the village blacksmith who was lynched by a mob of religious fundamentalists appealing for an end to discord and sectarian violence.
These stories, and dozens of others like them, map our country’s fault lines. In this book, Barkha Dutt recounts the ones that have left an indelible mark on her. Taken together, they provide a vivid, devastating and unforgettable portrait of our unquiet land. |
|
| Suketu Mehta |
 Suketu Mehta is the New York-based author of ‘Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found,’ which won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award, and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, the Lettre Ulysses Prize, the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize, and the Guardian First Book Award. He has won the Whiting Writers’ Award, the O. Henry Prize, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction. Mehta’s work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Granta, Harper’s Magazine, Time, and Newsweek, and has been featured on NPR’s ‘Fresh Air’ and ‘All Things Considered.’
Mehta is an Associate Professor of Journalism at New York University. He is currently working on a nonfiction book about immigrants in contemporary New York, for which he was awarded a 2007 Guggenheim fellowship. He has also written original screenplays for films, including ‘New York, I Love You.’ Mehta was born in Calcutta and raised in Bombay and New York. He is a graduate of New York University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. |
| |
| |
| |
|
|
