People's Democracy

 Premchand Exhibition In Jamia Millia

IN continuation of its activities to observe 125th birth anniversary of Munshi Premchand, SAHMAT in collaboration with the Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies, Jamia Millia organised its Premchand exhibition and a symposium on Premchand in the Jamia Millia campus on February 10, 2005. The exhibition which will stay in the Jamia campus for two weeks was opened by the external affairs minister Natwar Singh.

Speaking at the symposium, noted Hindi poet and critic Ashok Vajpayee underlined the importance of Premchand’s writings for initiating the process of individualisation in the Hindi-Urdu literature into the domain of literary writings. Vajpayee also emphasised that we should not forget that Premchand was a major writer in two languages, Hindi and Urdu, at the same time. Urdu critic Shamim Hanafi spoke on Premchand’s contribution to Urdu literature.

The minister for external affairs Natwar Singh said that he would lend his full support to the creation of a national memorial for Premchand at his birth place, Lamahi near Banaras, and appropriate celebration of the 125th birth anniversary of the great writer.

Welcoming the gathering, the Jamia vice-chancellor Prof Mushirul Hasan outlined the proposal to institute Premchand archive at the university and appealed to the government through the minister present on the occasion to support this endeavour.

Proposing a vote of thanks on behalf of SAHMAT, noted theatre personality M K Raina regretted the lack of enthusiasm on the part of the present government in appropriately observing the 125th birth anniversary of Premchand. He said that people, who did not believe in fundamentalist polities like that of the previous regime, need to celebrate their own icons and there is no bigger secular icon on the literary scene than Munshi Premchand. In this context Raina described the role of the ministry of culture as disappointing.

SAHMAT proposes to take the exhibition to different places through out the year.