Why I chose to attend the Alchemy festival, despite Vedanta's sponsorship

The mining giant’s involvement in the Alchemy festival was shocking – but turning up and talking still seemed right. It’s what writers do

The Jaipur literary festival celebrates the freedom to write, speak, read and listen. It is the largest literary festival in the world, free to all and it won an audience of 370,000 this January. Hundreds of thousands of young Indians go to hear the world’s finest writers and thinkers. Crowds of schoolkids, who arrive by train to catch their favourite authors and can’t afford accommodation, sleep rough at Jaipur station. And no one has to part with a rupee.

The programming, alert to new books from India and the world, explores sensitive debates while maintaining artistic and intellectual freedom. So it was a shock for everyone involved to find that one of the sponsors for a Jaipur residency at London’s Alchemy festival, staged by the Southbank Centre in London was mining firm Vedanta, which has a monstrous global record on human rights and environmental damage.

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