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.
As usual a wonderful depiction of the event by Isaac Gomes. Raghabpur has a rich heritage of Catholic history and the Bengali community there is expanding too, especially with the start of St Xavier’s College (Bengali medium) there. My elder sister has her house in Sajneberia and belongs to Raghabpur Parish and the parish priest Fr Joseph Toppo is very pro-active. My hearty congratulations to Dr Sadhana Karali and also to Fr Sunil & Fr Kanauj Roy for this great initiative to launch a Bengali literary & cultural centre in Raghabpur.
There was an era of Belgian Jesuits who took Bengali literature very seriously. They were highly motivated in their missionary endeavours to be rooted into the local culture and they made Bengali as their language both in their Bengali literary endeavours a spoken language. Both in the literary circles and among the grassroots common folk they spoke the language of the people. These Belgian missionaries had a vision with a deep sense of inculturation. Their innovative ways are still remembered by the people and Bengal’s intelligentsia.
I should mention the names of such Belgian Missionaries who were the pioneers to implement inculturation in Bengal. Starting from Fr Johans, Fr Thurmes, FR Paul Detienne, FR R. Antoine, Fr. Pierre Falon, FR C. Mingnon, FR Engelbert, FR Mathew Shillings and others. Their presence was a great boon to Bengal to create such situations, that would be truly Local Church.
Most of the authors present at this gathering of esteemed literary figures did mention their names. Even a book is compiled by an eminent author of Bengal by Soibal Sarkar entitled ‘Shei Shob Sahebera’ (Those gentlemen from Europe). There are a few chapters dedicated to Fr Paul Detienne, Fr Pierre Fallon etc.
This way a great honor was given to these missionary’s contributions in Bengali literature.
Certainly it was a great initiative on the part of Dr Sadhana Karali to launch this literary endeavour to create a platform for younger generation to take interest in their mother language and spread their wings globally. ‘Be rooted locally but think globally’ that will be the dream of Abokash, a centre to promote Bengali Literature and tap budding authors to continue the legacy of Belgian Jesuits.
Thank you for the insight. Very interesting piece of information.