Noted Hindi writers not invited to World Hindi Summit

Bhopal, Sep 8: With Madhya Pradesh all set to host the 10th World Hindi Summit, a large section of Hindi scholars here say they fail to understand why they have not been invited to the event in their city where noted personalities of the Hindi literary world would be participating.

The September 10-12 "Vishva Hindi Sammelan" is expected to witness participation of about 5,000 scholars from across the country and the world.

Though the invitations have been sent to a number of people in India and abroad, many of the litterateurs in Madhya Pradesh are apalled at being ignored for an event to be held in their own country and even home state.

"It seems the focus of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government is only to woo non-resident Indians," Noted writer Ram Prakash Tripathi told IANS.

"Be it eduction or language, everything is politics-driven. But the organisation of this summit reflects a narrow-minded psyche. Though literature is vital characteristic of a language, this summit is being kept away from literature itself," he said.

"Politics has never strengthened any language. It gains strength from literature. No regime has offered power to a language. History shows that whenever a language was interfered by the government or politics, the language has weakened and controversies erupted," Dhruv Shukla, a veteran writer, told IANS.

He said the sheer disregard for excellence in Hindi literary world is shown by the absence of invitations to various well-known writers like Rajesh Joshi, Mehrutrisha Parvez, Rajesh Shah, Vijay Bahadur and Ram Prakash Tripathi -- all of whom reside in Bhopal's writers' colony Nirala Nagar.

IANS