Hindi scholars honoured, plays on Premchand’s stories staged

Varanasi: The two-day ‘Lamahi Mahotsav,’ held to mark the 143rd birth anniversary of the great Hindi novelist Munshi Premchand, concluded on MondayThe festival was organised by the regional cultural centre of the department of culture, in association with the Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith, Premchand Jayanti Ayojan Samiti, India Tourism and UP Tourism, .Prof Awadhesh Pradhan of the department of Hindi, Banaras Hindu University, inaugurated the second day’s function at Munshi Premchand Memorial by lighting the lamp and garlanding the statue of Munshi Premchand. The guests were welcomed by the in-charge of the regional cultural centre Subhash Chandra Yadav.The scholars of Hindi literature—Prof Awadhesh Pradhan of BHU, Prof Shiv Kumar Mishra of Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith, noted writer Bhagwati Sinha, Shashi Kala Tripathi of Basanta College of Women, writer Uday Prakash and Sudhir Kumar Srivastava of the family of Munshi Premchand, were honoured on the occasion.Speaking on the occasion, Prof Pradhan described Munshi Premchand as a unique author, who imbibed time and environment and engraved them in his writing. He urged the youth to spread light in the society by imbibing his literature in the coming times. As a part of the fest, a padayatra was taken out by the members of Munshi Premchand Mitra Club followed by a series of cultural programmes by the students of different organizations and schools at Ramlila Maidan. The students staged drama based on the works of Munshi Premchand and presented folk and semi classical songs on the occasion. The cultural programmes continued till the evening.In the evening, the Munshi Premchand memorial and his ancestral house were decorated with 5,100 earthen lamps. The in-charge of the regional cultural center welcomed the guests, while Meenakshi Dixit and Sujit Kumar Choubey conducted the programme. The BJP district president and MLC Hansraj Vishwakarma, Prof Ramsudhar Singh, Prof Shraddhanand, Himanshu Upadhyay, Om Dheeraj, Rajeev Srivastava, Durga Prasad Srivastava, Suresh Dubey, Harendra Narayan Singh, local corporator Anita Singh, former gram pradhan Santosh Singh and others took part in the programme and paid their respects to Premchand.Earlier, an inter-school painting competition was held on Sunday at Saint Atulanand Convent School, Koirajpur, in which students from 16 schools had taken part.
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