Campus Diary

Urdu Book Fair at KU: More than 1 lakh books on display at 86 stalls

Srinagar: The National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL) in collaboration with the Administration of Allama Iqbal Library, Kashmir University (KU) organized an Urdu book fair in the main campus of the varsity.

The exhibition started on June 15 for 9 days.

There are more than one lakh books in 86 stalls with publishers from New Delhi, Lucknow, Kolkata ,Hyderabad and Kashmir.

“The aim of the exhibition is to promulgate Urdu language in India. Urdu Language is diminishing day by day,for that NCPUL is incumbent in providing extreme efforts to advocate the language more and more” said Ajmal Saeed, Assistant education officer, NCPUL.

The organisers of the event also aim to sell those books that are unaccessible to Urdu readers in Kashmir at present. The event is being funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development,Government of India.

According to Saeed, NCPUL other than working with government organisations is also working with some private organisations with the aim to preserve and promote Urdu language among people.

NCPUL recently launched an App eKitaab supported by versions of Android and IOS,comprising of books that are being published under the authorization of NCPUL. There are more than 190 books uploaded on the App in form of E-books.

Apart from books, the exhibition has a separate stall for the paper mache projects.The stall has been setup by the “New Jan Khan” in collaboration with the Department of Directorate of Lifelong Learning(DLL). “Our department organises a skill developing “Paper Mache course” for six months to train people in the art of Paper Mache”,said Nasreena Tabassum, a trainer. The stall experienced a huge attraction of students from various schools who had visited the exhibition.

Paper Mache stall at the Book Fair.

According to the Director NCPUL, Dr.Sheikh Aqeel Ahmed, people mostly verbalize their regional language that leads to Urdu being spoken very less. All the departments from Kashmir University as well as from other government organisations should play their equal roles in promoting Urdu language, he said.

NCPUL has published more than 1400 books till now with publishers from all over the India.”It’s very important to meet the Governor and the chief sectaries of Kashmir in order to elevate the Urdu language in educational institutes,” said Dr. Aqeel Director.

According to Dr. Aqeel, NCPUL has organised such fairs in many foreign countries, the recent one was held in Abu Dhabi. He added that NCPUL is planning to organise such events in those parts of the country where the influence of urdu is quite less.

NCPUL has been providing aid to over 400 newspapers published in urdu language with collaboration of UNI. “The organisation will also be organising a week long skill developing for journalists in urdu language,” said Dr. Aqeel.

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