Three British women organisers – Kavita Bhanot, Ayesha Siddiqi and Shazia Nizam – have sent a letter to Indian newspapers to protest at their treatment over the Mumbai based literary festival: Kitab. They are now asking British literary personalities to reconsider lending support to the event.

In their letter, they said: “[W]e feel that we were misled by Pablo Ganguli and are very disappointed by his behaviour prior to, during, and subsequent to the festival. We urge you to express your disapproval for this unjust behaviour; to email Pablo on the address above and not to lend your support to Kitab 2008.”

“Lastly, we would like to apologise to all the participants who were also left inconvenienced and disappointed by Kitab 2007 – those who were cancelled on at the last minute, those that were misled, and those who were given lower priorities than their British counterparts – and we assure you that we expressed our concerns about all these factors throughout.”

The three allege that they had been communicating with Mr Ganguli, another British Asian, for the past 12 months, requesting full salaries but to no avail. They say they were forced to pay for expenses out of their pocket and had not been able to claim those expenses back.
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In comments to The Guardian newspaper, Pablo Ganguli is denying all the accusations.