Opening Doors to Far Eastern Bharat’s Literary Legacy
The Third Pragjyotishpur Literature Festival, featuring a series of fascinating deliberations, will open its doors to author-translators, art connoisseurs, critics, budding writers, performing artistes, translators, and other literature enthusiasts, enabling them to rediscover the legacy of far eastern Bharat.
Organized by the Sankardev Education and Research Foundation under the theme ‘In Search of Roots’, the annual Pragjyotishpur Litfest (PLF) will host numerous luminaries whilst celebrating the region’s rich literary and cultural heritage.
The three-day festival, scheduled for November 14, 15, and 16, 2025, in the prehistoric city of Guwahati, will comprise panel discussions, interactive sessions, a workshop on contemporary nature writing, multilingual poetry recitations, and more, promising an intellectual treat for the audience.
Intriguing Sessions and Special Highlights
Five compelling sessions await literature enthusiasts at the forthcoming PLF carnival: ‘Evolution of Assamese Performing Arts: From Ankiya Bhawana to Bhramyman’, ‘Evolution of Assamese Lyric Literature: Tracing the Journey from the 1990s to the Contemporary Era’, ‘Assamese Language, Literature and Journalism: Growth and Expansion’, ‘Transcending Language Boundaries:
The Triumphant Journey of Assamese Translated Literature’, and ‘The Creative World of Novelist Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya: An Exploratory Journey’.
Also on the programme are a special session on Kalaguru Bishnu Prasad Rabha—a towering personality who contributed enormously to Assamese music, painting, literature, and politics—a workshop on nature-inspired literature, and outdoor multilingual poetry sessions uniting voices from diverse linguistic communities, including Asomiya, Sanskrit, Hindi, English, Bodo, Karbi, Mishing, Nepali, Bengali, Rabha, Tiwa, and others.
Reflections on the Successful Pragjyotishpur Literature Festival 2024
The PLF 2024 concluded on a high note, inspiring participants from across the region through engaging sessions and workshops that embraced novice writers, intellectuals, and cultural researchers.
It was inaugurated by Dr Malini Goswami, former Vice-Chancellor of Assam Women’s University, in the gracious presence of renowned economist Swaminathan Gurumurthy, Supreme Court advocate J. Sai Deepak, Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Anand Ranganathan, eminent historian Sanjeev Sanyal, and SERF chairman Lt Gen (Retd.) Rana Pratap Kalita, organizing president of Taren Boro, and many other distinguished personalities.
The closing ceremony featured the presentation of PLF awards to veteran Nepali author Bidyapati Dahal and emerging author Suprakash Bhuyan (in the promising writer’s category), with renowned academician Dr Amarjyoti Choudhury as the chief guest.
Expressing gratitude for the honour, Dahal—a Sanskrit scholar who has contributed to Nepali and Hindi literature—stated that it motivated him to produce more literary works in the coming days. Bhuyan, known for his thought-provoking stories in Assamese literary magazines, remarked that the award reinforced his responsibility towards the literary craft.
PLF Joins India’s Vibrant Literary Circuit
Numerous Indian cities now host annual literature festivals that propagate regional literary works with great enthusiasm, where hundreds of thousands of readers, writer-authors, playwrights, scholars, social thinkers, music and film appreciators, editor-journalists, and literature buffs mingle.
The PLF has joined this prestigious national club, alongside events such as the Jaipur Literature Festival, Apeejay Kolkata Litfest, Kalinga Litfest, Bharat Litfest, Hyderabad Litfest, Koshala Litfest, Bangalore Litfest, Kerala Litfest, Mumbai Queensline Litfest, Nagpur Orange City Litfest, Gurgaon Litfest, Chandigarh Litfest, Delhi Litfest, Patna Litfest, Nalanda Litfest, Dehradun Valley of Words, Kumaon Festival of Literature & Arts, Times Litfest, Goa Arts and Literature Festival, Bundelkhand Litfest, Lucknow Litfest, Mathrubhumi Litfest, Kashmir Litfest, Jamshedpur Litfest, Western Ghats Litfest, Guwahati Litfest, Shillong Litfest, Imphal Litfest, and others.
A Vision for Redefining Regional Heritage
PLF president Phanindra Kumar Dev Choudhury emphasized the importance of showcasing the history, culture, and languages of the land once known as Pragjyotishpur (later the Kamrup kingdom), whose capital lay roughly in present-day Guwahati, in the correct perspective.
Expressing dissatisfaction with the tendency of many highly educated individuals to undermine their own heritage, Dev Choudhury exclaimed that numerous authors attempt to define Indian literature through the lens of foreign writers, thereby ignoring the serenity of ancient Indian civilizations.
Before the PLF, Guwahati hosted three editions of the Brahmaputra Literary Festival, patronized by state-owned publishing institutions, namely the National Book Trust (NBT) and the Publication Board of Assam, at Srimanta Sankaradeva Kalakshetra. He expressed hope that PLF 2025 will continue its endeavour to redefine the legacy of the Kamrup-Kamakhya civilization.
