25 languages of India and South Asia were highlighted on the milestone occasion, presented through poetry recitation and cultural expressions.
The 25th International Mother Language Day was celebrated at the House of Lords in London recently. Hosted by Baroness Garden of Frognal and organised by Sanskruti Centre for Cultural Excellence, 25 languages of India and South Asia were highlighted on the milestone occasion, presented through poetry recitation and cultural expressions.
Presenters from various professional and demographic backgrounds congregated to present their self-authored pieces in their native languages. Andrew Sutton- Honorary Consul of the Kingdom of Bhutan and Prof. Peter Austin, Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics at SOAS, University of London were the Guests of Honour and gave thought-provoking inputs at this silver jubilee event.Well-known Hindi writer Tejendra Sharma MBE presented his Hindi poem.
Dzongkha, Dhivehi, Nepali and Sinhalese were the South Asian languages presented, while Assamese, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Bhutia, Dogri, Gujarati, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Maithili, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Sindhi, Telugu, Tamil and Tulu were the Indian languages presented. Young children Tanushreya and Manasvi presented classical dance on a Sanskrit composition written by King Shah-ji of Tanjavur Kingdom and Sree Lalitha Kotla presented a folk dance on a poem by celebrated Hindi poet Padma Bhushan Maithili Sharan Gupt, who was famed to use poetry to put forward his opinions as Rajya Sabha MP.
A booklet with all these poems titled Rhyme and Resonance (Kaavya Naadam) was released. The program concluded with Vote of Thanks rendered by Ragasudha Vinjamuri, Founder of Sanskruti Centre. Presenters were Rajlakshmi Dutta, Shitishna Bose, Karma Wangdi, Prashant Kumar, Lungten Tshering, Yasha Bhan, Aminath Thaufeega & Hasna Haidar, Harmit Vyas, Radhika Joshi, Dr Bernadette Pereira, Savira Araujo, Paulo Dias, Cllr. Sharad Kumar Jha, Manju Sunil, Prachi Ghotankar, Acharya Durga Pokhrel, Renu Gidoomal, Dr Chandeera Gunawardena, R. Banu, Dr Saritha Arunkumar & Dr Ragasudha Vinjamuri.
Sanskruti Centre for Cultural Excellence is a charity founded with the objective of generating a greater understanding of heritage and cultural diversity of India & South Asia. Apart from training and presenting classical and folk dances, the Centre has also been consistently fostering community engagement promoting languages for more than a decade and has been encouraging people to learn and write in scripts such as Takri, Khudabadi (Sindhi), Mithilakshar (Maithili) etc.
