This year's month-long Edinburgh Festival, which is often termed as the world's biggest festival for art and culture, will feature many Indian artists, including Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan. Jonathan Mills, the director of the , speaks on his reasons for focusing on India and the rest of Asia

What is different about this year's festival?
This year, we are focusing on the art and culture of Asia. But we are not being folkloric about it and instead looking at Europe's relationship with Asia. Thus, there will be a young Korean company performing Shakespeare's The Tempest, and another from Taipei performing King Lear. There is also a Chinese opera of Hamlet. All of these are very Asian, yet also European.

Why this focus on Asia?
Festivals are purveyors of ideas. An opera piece or dance performance is an idea that reflects the thoughts, preoccupations and visions of a particular time. So irrespective of what brochures tell about me, my job is essentially to sniff the air. And what I can say confidently is that the wind is blowing towards the East.