By Isaac Gomes

Raghabpur, Dec 19, 2023: The need for encouraging genuine literature and art to withstand the onslaught of Artificial Intelligence (AI)was stressed at the launch of a cultural hub in a West Bengal town.

“While humans struggle to find the right word to describe a situation, AI might do this in a jiffy,” warns Madhumita Acharya, a professor of St Xavier’s College, Autonomous Raghabpur Campus. Acharya expressed fears that AI might soon encroach into literature.

She was speaking at the launch of Abokash (leisure) Bangla Sahitya O Sanskriti Kendra and its “Anuprash” (alliteration), a Bengali journal.

A galaxy of Bengali writers and poets attended the December 17 program at the residence of the headmistress of St Paul’s Higher Secondary School in Raghabur, some 25 km south of Kolkata, the state capital.

To meet the AI challenge, Acharya stressed the need to create a culture of literature and arts and nurture original and creative thinkers who do not believe in copy-paste culture.

Father Francis Sunil Rosario, the chief guest, congratulated Sadhana Karali, the school headmistress and the person behind the program for her pioneering works to promote and nurture literary talents in and around Raghabpur.

The Calcutta archdiocesan priest, who is the secretary of the Commission for Dialogue and Ecumenism and Migrants under the eastern region of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, noted that promoting authentic Bengali literature was “a quite an arduous task” especially since Bengalis crave for English-medium education.

He told Karali not to get deterred by such obstacles and assured his support to her mission.

Also present on the occasion were Suranjan Midday of the Rabindra Bharati University, well-known writer Swapan Mukhopadhyay, Isidore Gomes, a microbiologist from Bangladesh, and Father Kanauj Roy, Baruipur vicar general.

Karali offered her residence to budding literary talents to help them explore their latent creative skills. She said they could use her reference library that holds works by Bengali literature luminaries such as Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, and Swami Vivekenanda.

She requested the audience to donate good books for her library to benefit lovers of Bengali literature. She reiterated that Bengalis must first learn their mother tongue well before picking up other languages.

With the launch of Abokash, Karali and her team would collaborate with the Jesuits of St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata, and its Raghabpur Campus, established in 2014, that has chosen Bengali as the medium of instruction.

Gomes from Bangladesh expressed joy to be in the company of many Bengali literature lovers.