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Vajpayee dons mantle of poet at literary meet
New York, Sept 26: Putting aside politics, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee donned the mantle of a poet when he interacted with renowned writers, poets, playwrights and scholars in 14 Indian languages here at a literary conference.
New York, Sept 26: Putting aside politics, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee donned the mantle of a poet when he interacted with renowned writers, poets, playwrights and scholars in 14 Indian languages here at a literary conference.
Addressing a three-day literary meet last night entitled "Tradition, Modernity and Beyond" organised by the US chapter of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Vajpayee in chaste Hindi said, "It is Indian literature that is responsible for holding Indian culture together through its diversity in
unity."
Keeping his promise to forget politics for one night, the Prime Minister spoke only about the underlying unity in literature in different Indian languages and how they complement one another in his inaugural address. "Culture is social and literature strings it together through words and emotions," Vajpayee told the audience which comprised Indian poets, writers and scholars who had come all the way from India to attend the conference.
He compared the literary works produced in different languages with rainbow, implying that despite different colours, rainbow has inherent unity and so is the case with the Indian literature.
"Literature is the replica of our soul and it reflects the rainbow of our culture. Today it is in New York and hopefully it will soon be global," said the Prime Minister. After delivering his inaugural address, Vajpayee sat down but then got up again, apparently inspired by the atmosphere, to recite his favourite poem 'geet naya gata hun' to the thunderous applause from the audience.
Among the invitees to the conference was former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, an author in his own right. He was in the audience but was persuaded to come on the stage and sit among the literary dignitaries.
Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee, Indira Goswami, Sunil Gangopandhyaya, Padma Sachdev, Nirmala Jain, Dilip Chitre, Harprasad Das, Suresh Dalal are some of the participants attending the conference.
The main aim of the three-day conference is to acquaint the second generation Indian writers here with recent literary trends and get their inputs. The 14 languages represented are Kashmiri, Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Sindhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Oriya, Bengali, Assamese, Hindi and Urdu. Bureau Report
Keeping his promise to forget politics for one night, the Prime Minister spoke only about the underlying unity in literature in different Indian languages and how they complement one another in his inaugural address. "Culture is social and literature strings it together through words and emotions," Vajpayee told the audience which comprised Indian poets, writers and scholars who had come all the way from India to attend the conference.
He compared the literary works produced in different languages with rainbow, implying that despite different colours, rainbow has inherent unity and so is the case with the Indian literature.
"Literature is the replica of our soul and it reflects the rainbow of our culture. Today it is in New York and hopefully it will soon be global," said the Prime Minister. After delivering his inaugural address, Vajpayee sat down but then got up again, apparently inspired by the atmosphere, to recite his favourite poem 'geet naya gata hun' to the thunderous applause from the audience.
Among the invitees to the conference was former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, an author in his own right. He was in the audience but was persuaded to come on the stage and sit among the literary dignitaries.
Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee, Indira Goswami, Sunil Gangopandhyaya, Padma Sachdev, Nirmala Jain, Dilip Chitre, Harprasad Das, Suresh Dalal are some of the participants attending the conference.
The main aim of the three-day conference is to acquaint the second generation Indian writers here with recent literary trends and get their inputs. The 14 languages represented are Kashmiri, Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Sindhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Oriya, Bengali, Assamese, Hindi and Urdu. Bureau Report