BENGALURU: President Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday emphasised the power of languages and religions in bringing people together by comparing them to rivers that merge together as they join the sea. He was speaking after inaugurating the 89th Nikhil Bharath Banga Sahitya Sammelan here.
Unlike the greed for land that has triggered many wars, language provides the medium to exchange views and bring people closer, he said recalling his four-decade-long association with Nikhil Bharath Banga Sahitya Sammelan, which was started by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, in his address, was full of praise for richness of Bengali literature and the brilliance of Tagore.
“Such has been the literary brilliance of Gurudev that India is yet to produce another Nobel prize winner in literature even after a century. No wonder the national anthems of India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have been penned by Gurudev.”
He recalled that Kannada poets and Jnanpith awardees Dr K V Puttappa (Kuvempu) and Dr Dattatreya Ramachandra Bendre (Ambikatanaya Datta) were influenced by the cosmic consciousness of Gurudev.
Another Jnanpith awardee, Dr U R Anantha Murthy, who headed the Tagore Chair, was impressed by the propagation of the ideal of national integration espoused in Gurudev’s classic, ‘Gora’.
Three-day Bengali lit convention kicks off in city
An annual literary convention for Bengalis was inaugurated by the President here on Sunday.
The 89th edition of the Nikhil Bharat Banga Sahitya Sammelan is being held at ITI Vidya Mandir School, Dooravani Nagar, KR Puram. It was attended by people from all over the country and over 2,000 people are estimated to have attended the event on Sunday. Many women were clad in the traditional red and white Bengali sarees and adorned big bindis. The event will go on til Tuesday.
After the inauguration, the president, in his native Bengali, spoke about how he was attached to it that even as the president he would find the time to attend it every year wherever it happened. He also mentioned some giants of Bengali literature and wished that the present committee would make it a bigger organisation. True to his words, the president had inaugurated the previous edition of the event on January 10 this year at Ranchi, Jharkhand.
The convention will feature, among other things, poetry recitations, folk music recitals such as baul sangeet, folk dance performances of ‘Jhumur’ and Bengali theatre. Several stalls have been put up at the venue which reflect Bengali culture, cuisine and way of life. Monomita Roy, convention secretary and president of the association’s Bengaluru branch, said Kannada language too had been assimilated.