Mayek adorns all India Poets' Meet invitation
Source: The Sangai Express / Manipur Info Centre

New Delhi, June 02 2015 : This is perhaps the first time that the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, which is dedicated to the promotion of literature and languages of India used the Meitei (Manipuri) script in the invitation of the All India Poets' Meet to be held at JN Manipur Dance Academy Auditorium, Imphal on June 8, 2015 .

It would be the second time that the Centre has paid respect to the Manipuri language by using its original script in place of Bengali script.

The first instance was on the International Mother Language Day, the 21st February, 2015, when Union Ministry of Human Resource Development paid respect to all regional languages of the country with the slogan "PAHLA BHAVA MATRIBHAVA, PAHLI BHASHA MATRIBHASHA" .

Mayek adorns all India Poets' Meet invitation

The display advertisement in colour appeared in National dailies and it depicted the slogan in each language in its script.

The Central Government used the Meitei script in place of Bengali script for the first time in the advertisement.

The slogan in Manipuri says : "AHAANBADA PUKNINGDA IMAGIDAMAK PHAOBA, AHAANBA LOL IMAROL" in Meitei Mayek (Manipuri Script) .

Manipuri adage says: Language is Mother, Script is Father.

The Sahitya Akademi event in Imphal will be chaired by the President of Sahitya Akademi Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari and inaugurated by eminent Rajasthani writer Arjun Dev Charan.

The Convenor of Manipuri Advisory Board, Sahitya Akademi H Behari Singh will be guest of honour.

Secretary of Sahitya Akademi K Sreenivasarao will deliver the welcome address.

In the morning session, poets namely Pranay Phukan (Assamese), Dileep Jhaveri (Gujarati), KG Shankara Pillai (Malayalam), N Bidyasagar Singha (Manipuri) and Shaista Yusuf (Urdu) will take part in the readings.

In the afternoon, the first session will be chaired by N Khagendra Singh.

Poets namely Tarini Shubhadayini (Kannada), Ramesh Veluskar (Konkani), S Lanchenba Meetei (Manipuri), Rajuram Bijarniyan (Rajasthani) and Nandini Sidhareddy (Telugu) will read out their poems.

The second session will be chaired by Leeladhar Mandloi, an eminent poet from Madhya Pradesh.

Poets who are taking part in the session are Subhro Bandopadhyay (Bengali), Aleendra Brahma (Bodo), K Radhakumar Singh (Manipuri), Ram Shah (Nepali), Manas Ranjan Mahapatra (Odia), PC Muraleemadhavan (Sanskrit) and Era Meenakshi (Tamil) .