South Asia is fast emerging as the key focus area of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) with four major events taking place in a span of four months since December 2009. The 33rd SAARC Festival of Literature hosted jointly by the Foundation of SAARC Writers’ and Literature and ICCR will began yesterday.

“The SAARC Festival of Literature scheduled for March 26-28 has the highest priority in the scheme of things for ICCR in South Asia,” director general of ICCR, Virendra Gupta said in a special briefing in the capital recently.

The ICRR’s South Asian initiatives began with the SAARC Bands Festival in December, followed by a SAARC Artists’ Camp and the South Asian Women’s Festival.

A students exchange programme will follow the literature festival, Gupta said.

The ICCR will bring “students and teachers from the South Asian nations to interact with each other in workshops, along with their parents to foster better perspective to understand regional cultures and situations. The literature festival will bring more than 200 members of the intelligentsia, environmentalists etc from eight South Asian nations which face common challenges. It is an attempt to forge new linkages in literature and culture,” Gupta added.

He also said that the literature festival was the only platform where the smaller nations like Bhutan, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Maldives and Nepal can find representation.

“This is a long-term objective. South Asia’s interact with the best served through people-to-people connect. Lack of understanding and ignorance breeds hatred and animosity,” he said.

Literature apart, it will play host to key session on environment, accompanied by cultural performance, including one by a troupe from Pakistan.