Because we love… our world, our fellow-beings, animals, rivers, plants and trees.
Reading a good story, a good poem, an article or a picture can draw us into glee or feel someone’s grief and both invite us into experiencing a kind of joy through association.
We often feel that our children… all children… can find pleasure through art and literature and through an engagement with their surroundings.
There is enough literature in Hindi, thousands of books, but very few can engage a reader or are a pleasurable read.
These books fail to evoke an experience for the reader. Most of the books we found were such that we felt children were better-off without them.
On the other hand, we have children, who are imaginative and inquisitive about the world around them. They want to make sense of their reality, to construct it and to join hands to support the ongoing activities. They want to sweep the floor and cook dinner with their parent. Within minutes, children can make interesting games out of discarded objects. Their minds are full of questions. They laugh even after struggling with the constant reminders about the ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’. Can we develop a literature
that addresses the nature of this child? This is the real question. A book that has dreams and struggles of children. A book that can create another corner of a child’s heart outside of him.
On one side, we have our beliefs, such as children will not be able to understand this… or understand that. Consequentially, children’s literature is full of books that create an artificial world that has unreal questions… unreal struggles… and an unreal world.
Whereas children live with us in the same world as ours. They have seen, heard and experienced death, riots, happiness, sadness, good-bad. They struggle with these to move forward to the extent that they present simplified, and fabricated responses to some real questions. They read a story suggested by us. Then during their entire schooling they present us with answers framed by us to the questions that are also framed by us. Who writes the questions at the end of a chapter in a textbook? Whose questions are they?
If the text has depth, children can ask deeper questions based on it. Most of our literature reflects that we do not trust our children. But some texts do trust them. For instance, in Anarko ke Aath Din, Anarko asks her mother- in our world who decides how everything would function? Who decides that Papa would work six days a week and rest on Sunday? Who decides that you would work on all seven days? Totto Chan
is also a dreamy book. It has teachers who patiently listen to Totto Chan. Who will show us the dream of such patient teachers in our present day world?
Children’s literature represents the life of a very small section of our community. Life of the rest of the communities is missing. Various shades manifested through our country’s diversity in terms of gender, marginalized communities, minority communities are missing in our literature. Male authors more often than not write strong popular female characters, such as Anna Karenina. In other cases, female characters stay stuck in a strange kind of helplessness. Everyday life, its struggles and dreams is missing.
The language used in children’s literature is also artificial. The gap between this language and our everyday language is huge. It is lifeless. Poems are such whose life is stuck in its rhyme. They are unreal and full of morals. Stories have not been able to free themselves from Panchtantra’s grasp. All stories are told through animals. Whereas the stories of plants, trees, animals, their nature, habits and lifestyles are
absent.
There is not a single language in which children’s literature is rich enough to be quoted as an example. A weak tradition of children’s literature exists in languages such as Bangla, Marathi, Malyalam, Tamil and other languages. But Hindi cannot even boast of this. Few established Hindi writers have written for children in comparison with Bengali language in which many established writers have contributed their writings for children. Its influence can be seen in the entire Bengali community.
In this background emerged Ektara’s vision to create a centre that could do some fundamental work in this field: for instance, encourage acclaimed writers to write for children through Srijanpeeth programme; organise writers workshop to encourage writers to write and share their writings and also to develop a discourse on children’s literature; publish magazines and books to create space for new texts; create a system for paying due remuneration to writers and illustrators, so that the next generation can
aspire to take up these fields professionally; invite young writers and illustrators to work in this field.
Ektara is also developing a course for young writers to orient them towards writing focused on children’s literature. Soon you will be able to find information about the course on the website. We would try to address all these issues through our publications.
Ektara is Takshila Educational Society’s Centre for Children’s Literature and Art. The centre aims to undertake the following tasks:
- To create a common platform for developing a discourse on children’s literature
- To develop and publish children’s literature
- To develop a resource centre for children’s literature
- To encourage young writers and illustrators to work in the field of children’s literature
- To create a common platform to strengthen various aspects of children’s magazines and children’s literature
- To create a platform to facilitate a dialogue among writers on writings in different languages
So far, we have initiated the following tasks
- Takshila Bal Sahitya Srijanpeeth– In Hindi, fewer established writers have contributed to the body of children’s literature. To fill this gap, Ektara, through Srijanpeeth encourages writers to write for children.
- Pluto– A magazine for early readers
- Resource Centre– Ektara is developing a resource centre for children’s literature and art. The centre would house books for children in different languages.
- Jugnoo Prakashan– Ektara’s publication unit is called Jugnoo Prakashan.
- Cycle-Cycle is a bi-monthly Hindi magazine for children between 9-12 years of age.
Ektara is a common platform that we are developing with your collaborative effort. Therefore, we seek you suggestions, help and advice for its future.
