Jaipur Literary Festival
By Professor Jane Ohlmeyer
Speaking at the 2025 Jaipur Literary Festival in India was a real treat. It is the largest literary festival in India and attracts huge crowds from across the globe. In a panel, brilliantly chaired by Anita Anand, on ‘From the Ruins of Empire’, I talked about Ireland’s imperial experiences as England’s first colony.
I suggested that our direct and sustained experiences of colonialism is one reason why Ireland has taken such a principled stance on Palestine. In another session, entitled ‘The Inheritance: History, Fiction, and Narratives’, Cauvery Madhavan, a fabulous Irish Indian novelist, and I had an engaged conversation with Bee Rowlett from the British Library.
This allowed me to talk more about my recent book, Making Empire, and our VOICES project on the lived experiences of women in early modern Ireland. I’m now looking forward to revisiting some of these conversations at the Jaipur Literary Festival in London, 13-15 June 2025.
Being part of team Ireland at Jaipur, along with Cauvery and Jessica Traynor, was a very special experience and I’m so grateful to the wonderful Irish Ambassador to India, Kevin Kelly, for making this happen.
He was also key in connecting me to William Dalrymple, who along with his co-host, Anita Anand, of the Empire Podcast (with its 800,000+ listeners) decided to produce a series on ‘Ireland and Empire’. Recording these at Jaipur with William and Anita was such fun and gave me another chance to talk about VOICES.
If you have a free moment do listen to all five of them: Four cover the history of Ireland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the fifth looks at Ireland’s relations with India from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.