Gateway lights up with ‘Marathi Day’ celebrations

Popular Marathi singers, dancers and littérateurs gathered at the Gateway to celebrate their linguistic heritage and history while they were cheered by hundreds of Marathi speaking people who had gathered at the venue.

The Gateway of India was transformed into a glittering venue for people to celebrate ‘Marathi Bhasha Gaurav Din’ on Monday. The event was aimed at celebrating and Marathi literature and culture.

Marathi writer Maruti Chitampalli being honoured during Marathi Diwas celebrations at Gateway of India on Monday.(Arijit Sen/HT PHOTO)

Popular Marathi singers, dancers and littérateurs gathered at the Gateway to celebrate their linguistic heritage and history while they were cheered by hundreds of Marathi speaking people who had gathered at the venue.

Keeping in tune with this year’s theme ‘role of computer and internet in language’, the state government made Marathi Encyclopedia available in pen drives that gave users access to a wide variety of texts in Marathi literature.

During the celebrations, state education minister Vinod Tawde, and BJP MLAs Raj Purohit and Ashish Shelar presented awards to various contributors and littérateurs of the language.

“Use of Marathi is increasing day-by-day. In the last week, around one lakh people shared their information on the Wikipedia page dedicated to the language,” said Tawde.

The minister also urged people to install Marathi Unicode on their computers. “We must use Marathi Unicode while posting on social media to give a boost to the language. We have also planned to create a ‘village of books’ in Mahabaleshwar where people can find an extensive range of Marathi books,” he added. The government is planning to open the “village” to the public by May 1, added the minister.

February 27 coincides with the birth anniversary of noted Marathi poet and writer VV Shirwadkar, popularly known by his pen name ‘Kusumagraj’ and so the day is celebrated as the ‘Marathi Language Day’.

The state government had issued instructions to celebrate February 27 as ‘Marathi Language Day’ across the state. It had also asked schools and colleges to celebrate February 27 to March 6 as ‘Marathi Language Week’.