BHOPAL : While photographs and brief life-sketches of dozens of Hindi authors ranging from Kalidas to Muktibodh and from Bhavbhuti to Vidhyaniwas Mishra are on display in the opulent venue of the ongoing Vishwa Hindi Sammelan, Mahatma Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave are conspicuous by their absence.
This, despite the fact that the Mahatma had made immense contribution to the popularisation of Hindi. In 1918, he had formed the “Dakshin Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha” to popularise Hindi in South India. It was Gandhiji who made Hindi the language of the freedom movement.
Talking to Free Press at the Sammelan venue, Congress Rajya Sabha member Satyavrat Chaturvedi said, “Isn’t it shameful that the organisers have forgotten the Mahatma and also Vinoba Bhave?” Whether the RSS’ antipathy for the Father of the Nation is behind this miss is anybody’s guess.
The veteran Congressman, who chaired the session on ‘Hindi in Foreign Policy” in place of Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj, who had to suddenly leave for Delhi on some personal engagement, said that political and ideological bias was very visible in the selection of delegates for the meet. “Just tell me, besides Rajiv Shukla and me, do you see a single Congressman here? And what about the Left Parties? Not even one of their members has been invited. Do the Leftists have no concern with Hindi?” he asked.
Chaturvedi said that he had attended five Vishwa Hindi Sammelans and had never witnessed such blatant political bias. “In earlier Sammelans, we always ensured that the BJP and the RSS men were there. After all, what has popularisation of Hindi to do with one’s political loyalities?”, he asks.
He also termed as ‘foolish’, the claim of Sushma Swaraj that this was the first Sammelan that was focussed on Hindi rather than its literature. “She has probably not read the backgrounder issued by her own Ministry”, he said.
Anyway, he said, it was impossible to imagine a language without its literature. Can anyone imagine English without Shakespeare, Dickens and Shaw? Language and literature are the two sides of the same coin, they complement each other, he said.
Other delegates too were not in agreement with the decision of the organisers not to invite litterateurs. “In such conventions we expect to meet writers, poets and critics. But unfortunately, here we did not get such an opportunity”, said a delegate from Kerala. Echoing the view, another from North East said that writers should have been invited as resource persons or speakers.
Mrinal Pande castigates writers-are-drunkards remark
Mrinal Pande, eminent writer, columnist and former editor of Hindi daily “Hindustan” hit out at the Minister of State for External Affairs General VK Singh for his ‘litterateurs-are-drunkards’ remark. She said that the Minister should feel ashamed in making such a pedestrian comment and sought his apology. When asked, the spokesperson for MEA declined comment. “The Minister has already given an explanation and I have nothing to add to it”, he said. General Singh had made the remark a day before the inauguration of the Sammelan. He had said that “We did not invite litterateurs and they come only for drinking and quarreling”.
FM channels are killing Hindi
Eminent journalist Rahul Dev said that FM channels were murdering Hindi by using Hinglish. He said that the radio jockeys use English words even when their Hindi easy equivalents are popular and can be easily used. Moreover, they mix Hindi and English in an absolutely unpalatable manner.
