Sir,
Reference ‘Regional Literary Festival at Patnitop’ Daily Excelsior Oct 29, 2021. Actually this festival was a part of ongoing’ Iconic Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav week celebrations’ and as per its title it was organized with the aim to promote the charm and love of all the regional languages of J&K UT, and strengthening the spirit of shared rich culture and traditions. Dogri, being a major language of Jammu region, all the Sahitya Akademi award winning writers of Dogri were specially invited to participate in this festival. Sorry to say, nothing concerning language or literature came under discussion from any side to promote these languages, nor a single writer including SA awardees, was given any time to put his views on this important issue. Even when LG in his address assured the writers that UT Government has taken full responsibility for the promotion of regional languages, his attention was invited to have the Department of Dogri in all the Universities of Jammu region besides the Dogri Academy, it remained untouched in the Press Release issued by the organizers of this literary festival.
Worst was the Poetic symposium. Never experienced during my long sixty years in the field of Art and literature. And when from the same platform we are advocating the linguistic harmony, instead of multilingual poetic session, it was divided into two parts. Dogri poets were segregated from the poets of other sister languages and as it was rightly pointed out by a poet before reciting his poems, both these sessions went headless and completely at the mercy of a poet conducting them. All such happenings encourage ill feelings, rather complex and instead of linguistic harmony leads towards an unwanted wedge to life long integrity among the languages of this region. Some time, it was being felt that the writer fraternity has been used as showcase to highlight the show biz of the organizers.
However, we feel obliged and thankful to VC and staff of SMVD University for their hospitality during our one day stay a Patnitop, the venue of this so called Regional Literary Festival.
Narsingh Dev Jamwal
Jammu
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