IHA Convention in Dallas Proclaims Unity of Hindi Speakers
Some members of the Houston delegation to the IHA National Convention with a few poets.
DALLAS: The International Hindi Association held its 18th Biennial Convention & Virat Kavi Sammelan in Dallas over the weekend of September 8 & 9 at the Hotel Carrollton Convention Center at the Marriot Courtyard Hotel. The two-day convention, themed as ‘Hindi – Definition of Indian Unity’, was attended by over 900 guests from all over the US, Canada, Nigeria and India. A Virat Kavi Sammelan was presented by five prominent poets from India and one from California.
Under the guidance of the IHA Dallas Chapter President Anita Singhal, her team worked tirelessly for 4 months to raise substantial funds to deliver an outstanding convention and create an event which would be fondly remembered by “hindi lovers’.
On Friday, September 8, the program started at 6 pm after dinner with a lighting of devotional lamps and prayer. This was followed by a variety of dance performances of folk classical dance forms like Kathak, Bharat Natyam, Garba, Bhangra and Bengali folk by local and national performers. Swasti Pande performed songs in different dialects like Bhojpuri, Maithili and enthralled the audience for more than two hours. The last session was lit by poetry presented by Hindi poets from all over the country who kept the audience spellbound by their witty creations.
The following day, September 9, featured many breakout sessions. In the Hindi language, literature & religion session, three learned speakers expressed their views on the relationship between language, literature and religion. Dr. K. D. Upadhyaya of Houston was the moderator and also presented a short play on friendship of ‘Krishna-Sudama’ with support from former Houstonians Mahesh and Sangeeta Derashri (who have recently relocated to Dallas). The play was so impressive that it brought tears to the eyes of spectators.
Some of the poets who presented at the Convention with IHA National President Swapan Dhairyawan (third from left).
Another session moderated by Dr. Dhiren Shah dealt with the influence of Hindi language on other regional languages. There were six participants in this session, who represented Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati and Bengali languages and discussed interesting correlations with Hindi.
Rashmi Bhatia moderated the session on Female (mahila) Empowerment during featuring four female speakers. Sunita Varma-Kurvari moderated the next session on Lifelong Companionship of Hindi – “How to keep youth connected to Hindi for their whole life?’, a problem faced by many teachers of the Hindi language. Veena Sharma moderated the session on ‘How to make Hindi interesting?’ with four panelists.
The session “Journey of progress of Hindi in international Universities” was moderated by Nutan Lal and five experienced professors discussed and shared their experiences in Hindi teaching at various universities of world.
The magician of words, Dr. Madhusudan Zaveri was the speaker of the next session “Construction of words by word”. He explained the evolution of different words of different regional languages from Sanskrit. The session was thoroughly enjoyed by all the spectators.
IHA National President Swapan Dhairyawan (of Houston) on the right helped to light the ceremonial lamps to start the convention.
The evening session began with dinner for more than 500 guests and chanting of the Sarasvati Vandana by local kids to kick off the formal program. The IHA Dallas chapter felicitated their guests, sponsors, supporters, by acknowledging their contribution to the event. Various office bearers of IHA gave brief speeches and a convention souvenir published by R D Joshi Consul was distributed.
The Virat Kavi Sammelan began soon after the formal program and kept spectators spellbound till 2 am. The star poets who performed were Padmashree Dr. Surendra Dubey, Dr. Sarita Sharma, Padmashree Dr. Sunil Jogi, Gajendra Solanki, Dr. Madhup Pandey and Archana Panda (from California) presenting poems on various ‘ras’ (emotions).
IHA National President Swapan Dhairyawan (of Houston) welcomed the guests and spoke of the13 key reasons responsible for the success of his 2016-2017 term. These included starting of new chapters in New Delhi and Nagpur, India; registration of and patenting the IHA logo; successful kavi sammellans in 41 cities all over North America; the timely publication of Vishwa magazine and financial transparency, all of which helped raise the bar of the organization. He stressed the need of involving non-Hindi speaking people and thinking out-of-the-box that would result in the wider spread of Hindi. “Our Raj Bhasha Hindi needs to get status at the UN,” he exclaimed, “and the IHA will strive to make that happen.”
For more information visit www.hindi.org