The Ujaan Festival, a three-day music festival set to be held in the Sunderbans, has been caught in a storm of ‘open letters’ and protests from environmentalists – ironically, since the festival was targeted at highlighting those very issues. The festival committee now finds itself shrouded in fishiness, with fake endorsements from Greenpeace and an exaggerated affiliation with the World Wildlife Fund. We track the events.
In a flurry of Facebook notes, mutinous poetry about storms in teacups soon metamorphosed into gutterkiaulad-esque vicious comments directed at mothers. This led to the creation of a new Facebook page called the Open Forum on Ujaan, perhaps with the intention of sucking some of the venom out of the original.
An open house meeting was held where the Ujaan committee explained their side of the story to pacify the concerned parties. At this meeting, the committee announced certain changes to the nature of the festival: it would now be acoustic, with workshops on waste management, music, art and craft etc and more involvement with the locals. The original opposing open letter written by Arka Mukhopadhyay can be found here.
We spoke with festival organiser Nishit Arora about the situation
It hasn’t been cancelled, only postponed. Due to the exams being rescheduled, we had to change the dates of the festival. After the Madhyamik exams, the elections are coming up – thats another month of nothing happening in this area. We are currently having meetings to tackle the issues that had come up. Everything was clear to us, it just wasn’t clear to a lot of people. If we can do it in the same venue with all the concerns being addressed, then yes the festival shall be held in the same place. In case that does not work out, we will look for alternate venues.
The event might be shifted by another four or five months. We have to account for a lot of other things such as monsoons, etc.
Tickets have already been refunded. The festival website has issued an apology statement.
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