Lucknow: To create children’s literature, writers should imbibe child psychology and linguistics. Today, there is a need to make children’s literature readable, audible and visual through workshops and other efforts.
These views were expressed by the chief guest Prof. Suryaprasad Dixit at this year’s Bal Sahitya Puraskar Arpan Samaroh organised at Sahitya Akademi Delhi’s Bhaagidari Bhawan Gomti Nagar.
On the first day of the two-day event, the chief guest Prof. Dixit discussed children’s literature from Vishnu Sharma’s Panchtantra to Dwivedi Sahitya Yug, Munshi Naval Kishore’s children’s literature efforts in Lucknow in the 18th century and children’s literature of Awadh region and said that meaningful Bal literature will be produced only when adults write like children. Taking the names of children’s magazines like Parag, Nandan, Gudiya, Chandamama, he said that children are attracted to exciting games, adventure travels, biographies of great men and inspiring incidents.
Children’s Literature
Presiding over the function, Academy President Madhav Kaushik said that writing children’s literature is the biggest missionary work and any writer who wants to purify his pen should definitely write children’s literature. There was a time when writing children’s literature was considered childish and even great writers in South Indian languages including Hindi had given up writing children’s literature.
It is a matter of happiness that now separate academies, awards and schemes for children are being run in most of the states of the country. Describing writing inspiring children’s literature as a difficult task, he said that if terrorists had got to read good literature in their childhood, they would have adopted humanity and not terrorism.
Discussing the Children’s Literature Awards started in the year 2010, he said that children’s literature and writers are respected much more in Europe than here.
The writers who received the award 2024 are Ranju Hazarika- Assamese, Dipanwita Roy- Bengali, Bharjin Jakabha Mosahary- Bodo, Bishan Singh Dardi- Dogri, Gira Pinakin Bhatt- Gujarati, Krishnamurthy Biligere- Kannada, Muzaffar Hussain Dilbar- Kashmiri, Harsha Sadguru Shetye- Konkani, Narayanji- Maithili, Unni Ammayambalam- Malayalam, Kshetrimayum Suvadani- Manipuri, Bharat Sasane- Marathi, Vasant Thapa- Nepali, Manas Ranjan Samal- Odia, Kuldeep Singh Deep- Punjabi, Prahlad Singh Jhorda- Rajasthani, Harshdev Madhav- Sanskrit, Dugai Tudu- Santhali, Yuma Vasuki- Tamil and Pamidimukkala Chandrasekhar Azad- Telugu were awarded with a copper plaque and a sum of Rs 50,000. In the ceremony, English award winner Nandini Sen Gupta- English award was received by his representative, while Devendra Kumar- Hindi, Shamsul Islam Farooqui- Urdu and English award winner Nandini Sen Gupta- English award was received by his representative, while Devendra Kumar- Hindi, Shamsur Rahman Farooqui- Urdu and Lal Hotchandani- Sindhi could not come due to ill health. Expressing gratitude to all, Vice President of Central Sahitya Akademi Kumud Sharma described children as the mirror of our society.
Discussing the storytelling of Amritlal Nagar and the creative and logical ability of today’s children, she said that a different flight of imagination is needed to create children’s literature. Earlier, while welcoming, Secretary K Srinivas Rao said that for the first time in the history of 70 years of literary activities, Children’s Literature Awards are being given in Lucknow, the bastion of culture. Children’s literature strengthens children psychologically. It also relieves them from many kinds of pain. It is hoped that the literature of the award winning authors will spread the innovation of knowledge among children.
On this occasion, along with enlightened literature lovers, writers like Dr. Amita Dubey, Dayanand Pandey, Chandrashekhar Verma, Zakir Ali Rajneesh, along with cultural workers Pratul Joshi and Ashok Banerjee etc. were also present.
On the second day of the event, tomorrow, 15th November, from 10 am, there will be a ‘Writer’s Meet’ with award winning children’s writers in Nirala Auditorium, Hindi Institute. In the meet, the award winners will share their speeches and experiences of creative writing under the chairmanship of Kumud Sharma. In the second session at 2.30 pm, there will be a seminar on ‘Children’s Writing: Past, Present and Future’. Writers from various Indian languages will express their views in the seminar.
