2nd day of centenary celebrations of Nikhil Bharat Banga Sahitya Sammelan: B'desh Diwas celebrated

kolkata: Bengali language is the bridge that unifies West Bengal and Bangladesh. Remembering the Bengali Language Movement or 'Bhasha Andolon' of Bangladesh in 1952, Satyam Roychowdhury, Chancellor, Sister Nivedita University (SNU) and Chairman, Reception Committee of Nikhil Bharat Banga Sahitya Sammelan (NBBSS), said on Monday how he feels rooted and connected every time he lands in the neighbouring country. "We have geographical boundaries, but it is the Bengali language that connects both Bengal and Bangladesh. Each time I visit Bangladesh, I feel at home. It's the country where I can speak my mother tongue and the feelings cannot be expressed in words," he said.

The second day of the centenary celebrations of the concluding ceremony of NBBSS on the SNU campus in Kolkata on Monday was dedicated to Bangladesh. Celebrating Bangladesh Diwas, Roychowdhury remembered how in 2018 Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina won the audience with her outstanding speech at the first international convention held in Dhaka. Reciting Rabindranath Tagore's 'Banglar Mati Banglar Jol', Roychowdhury said: "We will organise NBBSS every year and make sure the Bangladesh delegation visits us and enlightens us each time." Pradip Bhattacharya, MP and president, NBBSS said it is the language only, which can bring two countries together. "West Bengal and Bangladesh have proved how territorial boundaries do not matter when it comes to the power of language," he said.

Bangladesh's leading educationist Soumitra Sekhar Dey said how every day literary scholars and writers are working to enrich the Bengali language on both sides of the border. At the event, Bangladesh delegates including journalist and researcher Jayanta Acharya and Sreyashi Roy were felicitated too. Monday also saw the active participation of the NBBSS members when popular Bengali authors Binayak Bandopadhyay, Moumita, and Pracheta Gupta and journalists Snehasish Sur and Moupiya Nandy came together to discuss the impact of Bengali literature in the age of social media.

A recipient of Kishore Sahitya Academy Award in 2021, Gupta said how it is not possible to live without social media today. Though he is yet to open a Facebook account, the author said, "If social media was the yardstick of Bengali literature, then this gathering on the SNU campus wouldn't have been possible."

For Moumita, everyone is vying for the maximum number of likes on social media.

"However, literary works like Mahasweta Devi's 1974 novel 'Hajar Churashir Maa' is still popular without getting social media likes and shares," she said. Eminent Bengali writer Binayak Bandyopadhyay said social media shouldn't become the identity and deciding factor of

our lives.