Commemorating 100th birth anniversary of Vajpayee
PrashantNews
After organizing its first three-day International Literature, Art and Culture Festival in October, the Lekhak Gaon in Dehradun is now gearing up to commemorate 100th birth anniversary of former Prime Minister late Atal Behari Vajpayee on December 25 by organizing a grand memorial lecture series in which writers from home and abroad will participate.
Former Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, the chief organizer, said the establishment of the writer’s village originated from the ‘pain’ of Vajpayee, who was saddened by the lack of respect given to writers in the country. Nishank said that Vajpayee had specially mentioned Suryakant Tripathi ‘Nirala’ in this regard, who had to face poverty in the last years of his life. “We want to pay befitting tribute to our great leader Vajpayee, who was the chief architect for the formation of Uttarakhand state,” he said.
Nishank said that the Lekhak Gaon, which is located in Thano area, will publish all those books which will be written within the premises. Nishank said that the famous classical dancer Sonal Mansingh will give a presentation with her team in the upcoming writer’s conference.
On the lines of Nalanda, a grand library of one million books will built in the Lekhak Gaon. The suggestion of such huge library given by the Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud, Nishank said.
He said, ‘When I told Chandrachudji that we are going to build a library of one lakh books in the lekhak Gaon, he said why one lakh, there should be a library of one million books on the lines of Nalanda. We have accepted this suggestion and decided to keep one million books in the library.”
Nishank recently met Justice Chandrachud in Dehradun. It is worth noting that on October 25, in the picturesque Himalayan region 24 km from Dehradun, the country’s first of its kind ‘Writer’s Village’ was jointly inaugurated by former President Ram Nath Kovind, Uttarakhand Governor Lt. Gen Gurmeet Singh (retd) and Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami.
All the arrangements have been made in the writer’s village like writing cottage, Sanjeevani garden, Nakshatra and Navgrah garden, library, art gallery, auditorium, yoga-meditation centre, discussion centre, beautiful museum of Ganga and Himalaya, restaurant etc.
The former Union Minister said that by coming to the writer’s village, the writers will be able to get new perspectives on various subjects by encountering nature, culture and knowledge-science at one place.