Putting aside politics, Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee donned the mantle of a poet when he interacted with renowned writers, poets, playwrights and scholars in 14 Indian languages here at a literary conference. The function was the Kavi Sammelan organised by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.Addressing the meet, entitled ‘‘Tradition, Modernity and Beyond’’, Vajpayee, in chaste Hindi, said: ‘‘It is Indian literature that is responsible for holding our culture together through its diversity in unity.’’ Vajpayee spoke about the underlying unity in literature in different Indian languages and how they complement one another. ‘‘Culture is social and literature strings it together through words and emotions,’’ Vajpayee said. He compared the literary works produced in different languages with the rainbow, implying that despite different colours, rainbow has inherent unity and so is the case with the Indian literature. ‘‘Literature is the replica of our soul and it reflects the rainbow of our culture. Today it is in New York and hopefully it will soon be global.’’ The 14 languages represented at the three-day meet are Kashmiri, Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Sindhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Oriya, Bengali, Assamese, Hindi and Urdu. The Prime Minister recited his favourite poem Geet naya gaata hoon but this time there was something new in store for Vajpayee and the audience. Former PM P.V. Narasimha Rao was there to give him company. Ironically, the audience enjoyed Geet naya gata hoon though there’s nothing new about it and people have heard this favourite poem of his umpteen times. Around 23 poets got the opportunity to recite their poems today.
