Jaipur Literary Fest Kicks off; Rushdie Skips

Around 208 top line authors, 150 performers and nearly 2,000 people, jostled for space on the manicured lawns of the Diggi Palace in the pink city of Jaipur in Rajasthan where DSC Jaipur Literary Festival opened on Friday, Jan. 20, 2012.

Queen mother of Bhutan, Ashi Sangay Choden Wangchuk, chief guest at the inauguration ceremony, joined co-directors Gokhale and William Dalrymple and producers Roy and Seuli Sethi to set the stage for four days of literature.

The festival this year features celebrity Oprah Winfrey, leading playwright Tom Stoppard and novelists like Michael Ondaatje and Ben Okri and is hosting sessions on core literature, politics, subcontinent and frontline accounts from the Arab Spring and around Asia.

Besides, a bulk of the festival is devoted to Bhakti and Sufi poetry and Bhasa literature.

"The Satanic Verses" author Salman Rushdie said that he would not be attending the DSC Jaipur Literary Festival following threats "from paid assassins."

"I have been informed by Intelligence Bureau sources in Maharashtra and Rajasthan that paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld were coming... to eliminate me... I will therefore not travel as planned," Rushdie said.