Major three-day Hindi meet set to begin in New York

New York, July 10: A poetic gathering, a sitar recital, a Bharatanatyam and a ghazhal performance will form part of the Eighth World Hindi Conference scheduled later this week here.

Dr P Jayaraman, executive director of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan-USA, which is playing a major role in organising the three-day event, and Consul General Neelam Deo addressed a news conference last evening at the Consulate General of India about the upcoming event.

Noted lyricist Gulzar and filmakers Mahesh Bhatt and Jagmohan Mundra from India will attend the three-event, which will be inaugurated at the United Nations on July 13. Various sessions on different aspects of the language will be held elsewhere in New York.

Ms Deo explained that an hour-long film on propagation of Hindi through Indian cinema will be screened for about 1,000 participants.

The role of information technology in propagating Hindi and translation of Hindi works into other languages as well as other languages' works into Hindi are among the topics to be discussed, said Ms Deo.

She noted that at least three major universities in the United States currently teach Hindi.

Nearly half of the delegates, about 450, will be arriving from India while 225 will come from different parts of the United States.

Most delegates will bear their expenses to attend the event, the organisers said.

Forty scholars of Hindi from India and 20 from overseas will be honoured on the occasion. A Hindi books exhibition covering many subjects is also planned.

On April 23, Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma launched the conference's logo and website www.vishwahindi.com in New York.

Mr Sharma will be inaugurating the conference at the world body to highlight the international perspective of the second most spoken language of the world.

''Given India's engagement with the world today, this conference will send out a very strong message of its own,'' the Minister said, formally inaugurating the website at the consulate.

One of the purposes of the event is to seek an official status for Hindi at the world body, where only Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish are officially recognised.

This is the first time that such a major Hindi event is being held in the United States, where nearly 3 million Indians live.

Seven conferences have been held so far. The first was organised at Nagpur in 1975 when late Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister.

The other conferences were held in Port Louis (1976), New Delhi (1983), Port Louis (1993), Port of Spain (1996), London (1999) and Paramaribo (2003).

UNI