Vice President Hamid Ansari emphasises on critical role of writers and narrators

NEW DELHI: India's unmatched diversity of literary traditions reflects its plural ethos, Vice President Hamid Ansari said on Saturday even as he emphasised on the critical role of writers and narrators in "inducing sanity in an increasingly maddening world".

A well-developed literary tradition is the hallmark of every civilisation, Vice President Ansari said, adding India has an unmatched diversity of literary traditions in many languages and cultural patterns.

The Vice President was speaking at the ' Delhi Literature Festival', organised by The Times of India at the decades old Maidens Hotel here.

"This is reflective of our plural ethos that has accommodated and enriched a wide variety of impulses and influences," he said.

He said the sense of unity that pervades the fabric of Indian society is intangible.

"It is reflective of a continuum from the traditional to the modern and post-modern, in prose, poetry and the multiplicity of oral narratives," the Vice President added.

The writers and narrators are inheritors of a very rich legacy, he said, adding that "their role in inducing sanity in an increasingly maddening world would remain critical".

Vice President Ansari said that he had been given to understand that the event is a people's festival covering an entire spectrum of ideas from scholarship to social media, from high art to street expressions, from ' dastaan-goi' to budding novelists, from films to sports.

The festival, he said, aspires to be a bridge between ivory tower and the town hall.