The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Anuvada academy annual awards presented

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Anuvada academy annual awards presented

Special Correspondent

BANGALORE: The Karnataka Sahitya Anuvada Academy presented its honorary awards for 2007 and book awards for 2006 here on Friday.

The honorary awards were presented to 114-year-old scholar Sudhakar Chaturvedi, Basavaraj Puranik, Gurumurthy Pendakur, B.N. Chandraiah and Sarjoo Katkar.

The book awards for 2006 were presented to K.M. Seetharamaiah for his translation of Homer’s Iliad into Kannada, Eshwarachandra for his work on communal problems, Snehalatha Rohidekar for “Ullanghana”, Hasan Nayeem Surakoda for “Saddyakkidu Huchchara Santhi”, and K. Venkataraju for “Bapu Kuti”.

Members of the academy such as K.S. Bhagavan, Ramzan Darga, Vasanth Kushtagi and Chandrakantha Pokale, who have achieved laurels in translation and literary works, were also honoured on the occasion.

Presenting the awards Secretary, Kannada and Culture, I.M. Vittalamurthy said that though there were excellent books in Kannada they were not reaching the readers in different parts of the country. He said that the Government, academies and private enterprises should jointly promote the production and marketing of books. The market was wide and vibrant, and the author or publisher alone could not do the distribution of books effectively, he said.

Mr. Vittalamurthy said that the present book policy was rigid in its approach and did not contribute to wider propagation of books and language. It was also curtailing the spread of knowledge and culture, he added.

He appealed to the academies to work towards a common interest where the spread of languages, culture and knowledge could be done effectively.

Writer Giraddi Govindaraju said that there was no meaning in creating more academies in the State when the existing academies were not getting their due share of funding. The Government should sustain the academies to the fullest of their potential before new academies were created, he said.

Mr. Govindaraju said that translation was an important activity by which culture could be spread from one region to another. Earlier, in his welcome speech, president of the academy Pradhan Gurudutt said that during the last one year the academy got 50 books of Tamil, Telugu and Urdu translated into Kannada with the Rs. 40 lakh grant given by the Government.

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