Khushwant Singh Literature Festival 2025 To Be Held In Kasauli

La Polo brings news of the best International and Indian festivals for our discerning audience of readers. Autumn is here, and for all you literary buffs in India and abroad, it is time to head for the hills at the Himalayan town of Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh. The Thirteenth Khushwant Singh Literature Festival 2025, Kasauli, is being held from 10-12 October at the Kasauli Club. La Polo sat down with one such founding member and co-host who has been deeply involved with the Festival, Mrs Madhur Singh, whose revelations will surprise you.

Picture this: a literary festival where planting trees is as important as publishing the books. Where scholarships go out to barefoot girls who walk four hours a day to school. Where war widows sit next to bestselling authors telling stories that remain forever unpublished. Welcome to the Khushwant Singh Literature Festival, the only event in India that is actually transforming lives, one story at a time.

The Rebel’s Legacy Lives On

When Niloufer Bilimoria and Rahul Singh decided to celebrate India’s most irreverent writer in 2012, they could have opted for the easy thing-another celebrity-packed literary carnival. To the contrary, they asked a radically different question: What if a festival could embody everything Khushwant Singh stood for?

Answering such a question did indeed transmute this sleepy Himalayan cantonment into the most purposeful gathering for literary activities in India. “Why Khushwant Singh? Why not just Kasauli LitFest?” She explains with shining eyes: “Because this festival is not about a place; it is about saving our fragile planet, empowering women, opening bridges with the world, and keeping freedom of expression alive in this fractured world.”

This isn’t your run-of-the-mill mission for a literary festival. It works in relation to Khushwant Singh’s writings and their immediate contemporary relevance.

The Festival That Plants While It Publishes

Here is when the Khushwant Singh Literary Fest becomes interesting: Other festivals are counting ticket sales; this festival counts the trees planted (over 2,000), the girls educated (hundreds), and the lives uplifted (countless). Since 2012, it has quietly fashioned a social impact empire that would make almost every major NGO jealous.

Water harvesting at village schools? Check. English libraries for the remotest areas? Done. Scholarships for daughters of landless farmers who cannot afford a decent pair of shoes? Every single year. “We have girls who walk two hours to school and two hours back, barefoot,” Mrs Singh told me, breaking the strongest hearts — stories that matter. “Our scholarships don’t just pay for books—they pay for dreams.”

Now, on its own, the Khushwant Singh Lit Fest is already compelling and interesting. But what makes it more interesting is that the Khushwant Singh Lit Fest is held in which hill station? An army cantonment area called Kasauli, the wounded soldiers of the human race being cared for there, alongside war widows, where literature meets life at its most raw and real.”

When Celebrities Become Changemakers

Say goodbye to the typical literature festival format of offering a range of unengaging panels. The Khushwant Singh Literature Festival 2024 attracted voices that matter, featuring William Dalrymple on how history shapes our future, Ruskin Bond sharing stories that generations have heard and cherished, Shashi Tharoor linking politics to prose, and Imtiaz Ali discussing how cinema and literature intertwine.

What lends real power to these conversations is their actionable side. When scientists talk about climate change, every single person in the audience knows that this festival has just planted thousands of trees. When authors engage in conversations about women’s rights, they’re doing so on behalf of an organisation that’s actively getting girls through school.

The festival isn’t all talk when it comes to green themes; it plants, builds, and transforms. Themes like “Climate of Change” of recent years do not lend themselves to languid conversations; they inspire speeches triggered by action.

From Kasauli to Cambridge: A Global Literary Revolution

Plot twist: The small-town festival has turned international, and how! After running for thirteen years in Kasauli, the Khushwant Singh Literary Festival London and Khushwant Singh Literary Festival Oxford stand today on prestigious international platforms with the same revolutionary spirit. The sixth edition in London and the inaugural one in Oxford this summer made a statement that good stories travel everywhere, and great causes travel even further.

Imagine Pakistani authors sharing platforms with Indian colleagues in the prestigious venues of London, discussing partition literature, while the festival back home is building literal bridges through community projects. This is more than just cultural exchange; it is cultural healing.

The Secret Sauce: Literature That Lives

What is that magic that makes KSLF stand apart from any of the many literary festivals in India? The answer is simple yet radical: every word spoken must link to a changed life.

Where authors speak of education, libraries are being built. When opinions about women’s empowerment are expressed, scholarships will be awarded. When Indo-Pak relations are discussed, there is an actual bridging of dialogue across borders. This is not literature-as-entertainment; this is literature-as-activism.

Mrs. Singh unveils their next big initiative: “We want to have awards for first-time authors, as KS was a mentor to generations of journalists..” Even their future plans honour the past while building tomorrow.

The Joy of Learning Revolution

An eerie detail follows: the festival hosts the “Joy of Learning” contests. Now imagine children in remote Himalayan villages competing, not for prizes, but for the sheer joy of learning stories. English book libraries were set up in schools where no child knew what a novel was. Writing workshops for war widows, so they may find their voices.

This is what happens when literature stops being for literary people and starts being for all people.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

In this age of digital noise and cultural fissure, KSLF provides something quite radical: evidence that stories can still change the world. Not in grand gestures or social media-famous moments, but in quiet acts of planting a few trees, educating one or two girls, and building one bridge at a time through conversation.

The festival is not measured by media headlines or glitzy, celebrity-attended events. Instead, it measures lives transformed, empowered communities, and bright futures. In the misty hills of Kasauli, around the same mountains that inspired Khushwant Singh’s fearless pen, this festival continues proving that the best stories don’t just entertain us—they remake us.

The Revolution Continues
Just as October approaches for the pilgrims and the mist accompanies the autumn in the Himalayan foothills, one thing stands out: Khushwant Singh Literary Festival is not only protecting a writer’s legacy but is also creating a future for the present, one story at a time.

In a world at disarray, here appears a festival quietly doing its work. Not with loud proclamations or political rhetoric, but with the quiet, perhaps revolutionary assertion that every story matters, every voice counts, and any life is developmental.

The revolution will be literaturized. And it’s happening right now, in the hills of Kasauli.