National Level Online Workshop cum lecture series on the novel Kanthapura by Raja Rao

A week-long National Level Online Workshop cum lecture series on the novel Kanthapura by Raja Rao was inaugurated today by the English Literary Society of RKSD PG College,Kaithal. The distinguished speaker is Dr Pankaj Sharma,Professor of English,Chaudhary Devi Lal University,Sirsa and co-editor of the novel Kanthapura. Dr Vikas Bhardwaj, convenor of the programme,introduced the theme of the workshop and outlined the housekeeping guidelines. Dr Suruchi Sharma,President of English Literary Society and coordinator of the event,handled the stage. Dr Rajbir Parashar,Head of the department of English,welcomed Dr Pankaj Sharma and Principal of the college Dr Sanjay Goyal and threw light on the activities conducted online by the English department during the corona period. Dr Sanjay Goyal emphasized the importance of such workshops and gave a brief introduction about the college to the speaker and to every participant attending online and offline. Dr Pankaj Sharma in the inaugural session of the workshop, started his talk by highlighting the importance of Indian English Literature and the localisation of the Indian culture through the Indian English Language. He emphasized that two of the famous Indian English novelists R K Narayan and Raja Rao actually recreated India and its culture through their Indian English language,style and form. Some of the major Indian English novelists like Amitav Ghosh,Vikram Seth,Salman Rushdie etc. settled the said tradition. Dr. Pankaj highlighted the importance of novel reading and stressed that in his opinion, a novel is the only source of entertainment in its capacity to handle big text and as also it is widely read. He said that Kanthapura as a novel brings the Indian freedom struggle for Independence through a rich sthala- purana. The interactive session was handled by Dr Manjula Goel wherein she took over from various participants across all online platforms and passed them over to Dr Pankaj who very patiently answered them all with the participants’ full satisfaction. Chairing the session,Dr Geeta Goyal,Associate Professor of the department of English,observed that Kanthapura as a novel has its roots in Indian culture. She stressed that the Gandhian background serves the reality of the entire Indian cultural tradition and Gandhi is a metaphorical presence in Kanthapura, an absent hero. It was Gandhi’s greatness that he produced thousands of little Gandhi throughout the country. Moorthy was one of them. Moorthy, a young student of Kanthapura is the central figure of the novel. In the end,Dr Suruchi Sharma extended a vote of thanks to the speaker and the participants and informed them to participate in the quiz which will be shared in their respective online groups in the form of a mixture of some multiple choice and descriptive questions based on the inaugural lecture. The event was made live on YouTube,Facebook and Zoom simultaneously by Dr Vikas. A total of 1510 participants got themselves registered for the event which got approximately 2000 views altogether across all the streamed online platforms. Prof Jaibir,Prof Naresh,Prof Anjali,Prof Richa,Dr S P Verma,Prof Archana,Prof Nidhi and Prof Pranjal attended the session offline.