South Asian Literary Lights Put Their Heads Together To Promote Their Writings

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SURREY – The literary tradition of  south Asia is well represented, preserved and promoted generally in BC and particularly in the lower mainland of Vancouver. Obviously, numerous mother tongues are spoken by the writers who immigrated to Canada. South Asian Canadians ( including people with origins in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, Maldives and Indian Diasporas from Africa, Fiji or the Caribbean) are a major part of Canadian cultural mosaic.

South Asians, who are foreign born , have very diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. While they can speak English still  the most common languages amongst them are -Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Bangla and Gujrati. Culturally ,many South Asian Canadians maintain strong bonds to their community and their heritage and try to adhere with  Canadian social  norms .

There are a couple of literary organizations such as South Asian Literary Society of Canada(SALSOC) and Writers International Network (WIN) which attempt to bring South Asian writers together. Recently a meeting was called by Acharya S. Dwivedi, President of  SALSOC to explore the possibility of publishing an anthology of original poetry of South Asian writers in English which intent to introducing it  to main stream Canadians.

The prominent  writers of various South Asian  literary groups  met on May17, 2014 at Studio7 in Surrey and worked out some of the details. It was decided that forthcoming anthology should include poetry of young South Asian writers too in a separate section.

South Asian writers are invited to submit their original works translated into English  to Acharya Dwivedi <[email protected]> ( 604 507 3099), M. Rafiq <[email protected]> (604 596 7781), Nadeem Parmar <[email protected] (604 298 2920), Mohan Gill<[email protected]> (604 590 0914) or Ashok Bhargava <[email protected] (604 327 6040).

Meeting was followed by Kavi Darbar in that  well known poets-Gurcharan S. Gill ‘Mansoor”, Nadeem Parmar, Hafeez Quadri, Nachtar Singh Brar, Jarnail Singh Sekha, Ashok Bhagava and Acharya Dwivedi took part.  Participants paid homage to a prominent  and pioneer leader of our community-Jack (Jagat) Uppal.