Sunil Gangopadhyay is new Sahitya Akademi president

He said his thrust would be on promoting oral and tribal languages through publications, seminars and other organisational efforts during his five-year tenure. “My new responsibility will require a lot of my time and effort. I am afraid it will eat into my time for writing. It is just as well that I am not working on any book right now,” he said, adding that he will call on his “old friend MT Vasudevan Nair” for guidance and advice.

Gangopadhyay is said to be close to outgoing president Gopi Chand Narang, an Urdu litterateur, who had initially thrown his hat into the ring again, but had withdrawn after several members wrote to the culture ministry against second terms for presidents. “I am glad that Sunil Gangopadhyay’s election has maintained the tradition. I, too, was vice-president and defeated Mahasweta Devi by a huge margin during presidential elections five years ago,” Narang said.

Gangopadhyay’s next major project will be the National Translation Mission, a proposal of the Knowledge Commission, which was debated by the general council after the election. “The Knowledge Commission had proposed that the Akademi be made the nodal agency in the project to translate all forms of knowledge into Indian language. The council, after a long discussion on the subject, decided that we would limit ourselves only to literary translations in 24 languages, an area in which we have expertise,” informed A Krishna Murthy, secretary of the Akademi.

Meanwhile, delegates listed out their expectations from the new regime. Anil Boro, a general council member and professor in the Department of Folklore atGuwahati University, said he expected more seminars, authors’ meets and publications in Bodo, one of the latest languages in the Sahitya Akademi’s list.