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Monday, March 02, 2015
Marathi Literary Meet in Punjab Creates Buzz
The 88th Marathi Sahitya Sammelan (literary meet) is to take place next month at Ghuman, Punjab. The choice of location has aroused quite an amount of curiosity. This is the first time that the annual meet is taking place in such a far away place. Everybody is anxious to know what happens to this mega event in a land where Marathi speaking population is scarcely available.
Organizing the literary meet out of Maharashtra is not a new development. This has happened earlier also and the Sammelans at Indore (Madhya Pradesh), Belgaum (Karnataka) or Vadodara (Gujarat) in the past have left their mark in cultural life of Marathi speaking populace. One meet was held even in New Delhi. Actually, the demand for United Maharashtra, a separate state for Marathi people, was made in such a meet at Belgaum. Still, the meet, which will take place in first week of April, has created a sort of buzz in Maharashtra.
Ghuman is situated in Punjab but its claim to fame is the samadhi- the memorial - of Sant Namdev, the 13th century saint poet who went to Punjab and spread the message of Bhagavat Dharma. Even though venerated by Punjab's population for almost nine centuries, it was almost forgotten place for Maharashtrians.
The initiative to hold this meet at Ghuman came from Sarhad, an NGO from Pune and its head Sanjay Nahar. When Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad, the organizing body for the meet, finalized this location as the next meet, everyone was puzzled. How will a meet, focused on Marathi language, be successful in a land where Marathi was not spoken for centuries and is not spoken even now.
However, the sarpanch and other functionaries from the village in Punjab visited Pune more than once and assured their full cooperation. Their gestures have shown a renewed cordiality which has made everyone yearn to go that land.
However, there is some roadblocks in the way. The Marathi publishers have decided to boycott the event saying that nobody would buy their books in Punjab where hardly anybody knows Marathi language. This threatens to be a major headache as large chunk of Sammelan’s revenue comes from the fees collected from the publishers to set up their stalls.
Nevertheless, Marathi literary meet has an extraordinary place in the cultural arena of Maharashtra.
