Festival on Indian languages begins in Delhi

Bringing together authors and translators across languages and borders, the Samanvay festival began in the national capital Thursday.

For the first time, the festival will this year host writers from Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

The fourth edition of the Samanvay - IHC Indian Languages Festival 2014 - will continue until Nov 9, featuring more than 90 speakers and performers on 20 languages and dialects.

The theme for this year's festival is "Translations Transnations" which will focus on Indian languages which have a transnational presence like Bangla, Bhojpuri, Chhattisgarhi, English, Hindi, Konkani, Malayalam, Punjabi and Sanskrit. It hopes to kindle a discourse on how languages and selves belittle borders and boundaries and mingle with each other.

"Samanvay this time traces the cross-border journeys of collective selves which define their identity by the language they speak. It brings together voices from margins of all kinds: socio-cultural, political and linguistic. It covers languages from Bastar to Nagaland and brings together writers, activists and artists from Dantewada to Dhaka...," creative director of the festival Giriraj Kiradoo said.

Eminent Hindi poet Ashok Vajpeyi, who delivered the inaugural lecture, said that "literature is born out of a deep love of the world".

The festival is being held in collaboration with National Book Trust, Delhi Press and REC Limited, among others.