Summary:
Last year as many as 550 books were published by the Akademi.An exhibition of books and journals published by Sahitya Akademi has also been organized in the college. PATNA: “The world would have been a dark place, had there been no language. “Punjabi language could not become popular so long it was written in Gurumukhi, but it attained popularity when people started writing it in Devanagari script. It serves as light in darkness,” said Hindi littérateur and Sahitya Akademi former president Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari in Patna on Saturday.Inaugurating a two-day ‘North-eastern and Northern Regional Writers’ Meet’ organized jointly by Sahitya Akademi-New Delhi and Sri Arvind Mahila College here, Tiwari said, “Most north Indian regional languages would have become quite popular if they were written in the same Devanagari script.”B N Mandal University’s former vice-chancellor (VC) and Sahitya Akademi member Amar Nath Sinha pointed out that language is an invention of mankind. Today languages like Gujarati, Marathi, Maithili and Nepali are popular as they are being written in Devanagari,” he said.Organizing secretary Shiv Narain Singh and several others, including Sanu Lama, Satya Narain, Ram Bachan Roy and Indra Kant Jha, were also present on the occasion.More than 50 eminent littérateurs of as many as 21 Indian languages spoken right from Kashmir to the north-east are attending the two-day meet.Sahitya Akademi secretary K Srinivasarao, in his welcome address, said the Akademi had been publishing books in 21 languages spoken by more than 70 crore people in the country..