For years, Dhaka—the sprawling capital of Bangladesh—has been known for the ancient beauty of its mosques, its nauseating traffic jams, and the thick parade of rickshaws lining the narrow streets. But English literature? In Dhaka? Any mention of it, especially in rarefied Western circles, would have prompted disbelief. Not anymore. Over the past few months, as Tahmima Anam’s novel The Good Muslim has been met with international acclaim, the city has fast emerged as an enclave of literary talent. At the Hay Festival of Literature and Arts last year, a thousand people thronged the British Council. Buoyed by its success, Hay returned to Dhaka this November with a far bigger retinue of talent, this time at Dhaka’s prestigious Bangla Academy, the premier government institution for the promotion of Bengali language and literature. Over two days, 20,000 people passed through the expansive banyan-shaded grounds of the academy and the lakeside Hay Dhaka Music Festival at Rabindra Sarobor. On the lawn, under the mellow winter sun, a packed crowd listened to recitals by the likes of Indian novelist Vikram Seth and Bangladeshi poet Syed Haq. Several English-language books and journals were launched, and two new talents, Khademul Islam and Maria Chaudhuri, were signed by Bloomsbury for world release of their memoirs.
As I have alluded to before, it seems that the “South Asian way” which stands in contrast to the model of development in Western Europe and East Asia is one in which high culture can flourish in the midst of persistent poverty and squalor. This is not an exceptional path; it was arguably the one which characterized antique civilizations like those of ancient Rome. The forum was a place where rhetoric and monumental architecture flourished, but it was almost certainly at the same fetid level of shocking hygiene that one can find in modern Third World mega-cities.
