Academy to revive rare books

ALLAHABAD: As part of its initiative to revive its lost glory, Hindustani Academy has started publishing rare out of print Hindi and Urdu literary books of the pre-Independence era. The first in the series is a book on legendry king Raja Bhoj.
Raja Bhoj’s ‘Coronation millennium year’ was celebrated in 2011 in Madhya Pradesh for one year. A book, ‘Raja Bhoj’ written by Ramagya Dwivedi ‘Sameer’ was published once in 1932.It was selected to be published.
The publication of two other rare books of the third decade of last century, ‘Awadh Kosh’ (1934) and ‘Prayag Pradeep’ (1937) have also started rolling and are expected to hit book shelves.
Prayag Pradeep was stated to be an exhaustive description of the socio-political history of Allahabad, documented by Shaligram Srivastava in 1937.
Sunil Jogi, chairman of the academy said the books would provide a good reading material for the readers as well as research scholars.
“The ‘Awadh Kosh’ published once in 1934 and written by Ramagya Dwivedi ‘Sameer’ is another book worth reading and incorporates the socio-geographic status of regions coming under the then Awadh, the districts of Faizabad, Lucknow, Pratapgarh, Allahabad, Shravasti, Sultanpur, Unnao and Kanpur,” Jogi added.
It may be mentioned here that Hindustani Academy, established in January 1927, publishes, promotes books in Hindi and Urdu. Till 80s, the academy used to buzz with literary discussions with stalwarts like Mahadevi Verma, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Jagdish Gupta and others regularly participating in debate. The Academy also holds seminars, talks and lectures for the promotion of the two languages.