Opinion Kozhikode: UNESCO’s City of Literature
Express View: The city has been at the forefront of India’s cultural movements. But the tag also draws attention to how urban planning can leverage creativity as a part of development
For any migrant in an alien city, much of a heaving metropolis remains prohibitively out of bounds. Yet, the only meaningful imagination of a brighter future comes from feeling at home in a space that is far from home 
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The UNESCO City of Literature tag for Kozhikode affirms what has always been an open secret: That one of culture’s great powers is its ability to assimilate and humanise. With a robust publishing scene, over 500 public libraries, bookstores, and a long tradition of kolaya (veranda) gatherings — informal, free-flowing discussions on politics and the arts — the city of Muhammad Basheer, M T Vasudevan Nair, P Valsala and others has been at the forefront of India’s cultural movements. But the tag also draws attention to the role that urban planning plays in leveraging creativity as an integral part of a city’s developmental goals.
In a rapidly urbanising, deeply polarising world, access and representation are crucial to make cities inclusive. In India after Independence, in cities that were as different as Delhi and Mumbai, Allahabad and Chennai, Kolkata and Vadodara, urban planning laid emphasis on keeping the community at the centre. But this idea of cities as repositories of cultures is beleaguered in New India, where homogenisation remains a driving impulse and where shiny glass-and-chrome buildings and gated communities determinedly mark their distance from the rest.
For any migrant in an alien city, much of a heaving metropolis remains prohibitively out of bounds. Yet, the only meaningful imagination of a brighter future comes from feeling at home in a space that is far from home. Brighter economic prospects, affordable housing, yes, but also embracing patches of green that allow a spot of rest or debate; book stores where one can browse even if one cannot buy; a sturdy public transport network; a city centre dotted with museums, archives, theatres, but also other less inhibiting spaces where one can experience a tamasha or a lavani, a nagar sankirtan or a mushaira. A place that forges friendships, evokes ownership, that galvanises and transforms in many different ways.
There was another such place that once grew out of the imagination of a university that opened its arms to the world. Santiniketan, which recently earned a UNESCO World Heritage tag, and home to Rabindranath Tagore’s beloved Visva-Bharati, drew in poets and philosophers, scientists and artists, dancers and musicians for the fertile ground it provided for creative exchanges. The plaque announcing the UNESCO tag has left Tagore’s name out of it, but perhaps, in hindsight, that is not so remiss after all. A place that distances itself from the local populace, that closes in on itself, is not one where Tagore, another migrant who had made it his home, would have felt at ease.
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