11/09/2018
Japanese Hindi Professor visits AMU
Aligarh, September 10: The Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) today hosted a special guest. Professor Hideaki Ishida, who teaches Hindi as a part of the International Cultures programme at the Daito Bunka University located close to Tokyo had AMU as his 'itnerary must' during his India trip to take stock of the use of Hindi and Urdu languages in the southern India.
"People in Japan are curious and more interested in India than ever before and the Tokyo University has been teaching Hindustani since 1908," said Prof Ishida.
The Daito Bunka University, has been running Hindi and Urdu programmes for over 35 years, informed Prof Ishida at two different functions organised by the Hindi and Urdu departments of AMU. He was the Chief Guest at the Sahitya Samiti programme of the Department of Hindi and the Interaction Programme organised by the Research Association and Anjuman Urdu-e-Moalla, Department of Urdu with noted writer and academic, Prof Suresh Rituparna.
Prof Ishida, who visits India every year, said that he has a special interest in Dalit Hindi literature which he developed during his student days in India. "I did my Masters in Hindi from the Delhi University and it was this time that I started exploring how the Dalit community has used literature to express themselves," he further said pointing out that he became particularly interested in the Marathi Dalit literature model and even started learning the Marathi language.
While releasing the special issue of the Department of Hindi's journal, 'Abhinav Bharti' on Amritlal Nagar, Prof Ishida said that for him Nagar is a very important exponent of fiction, who revealed the power of Manak (standard) Hindi and Ghair-Manak (ordinary) Hindi.
Sharing his experience of teaching Hindi at a Japanese University, Prof Suresh Rituparna said that in the beginning of the Hindi course in Japan, he used to teach students, the basic things like how they would introduce themselves and then they would move onto exercises and also teach them how to travel, how to shop, how to talk to strangers and how to use Hindi language in real-life situations.
He said that the Japanese students ended up liking everything about India. "After learning Hindi, they start enjoying the Indian movies, music and travel to places like Jaipur, Agra and Benares," said Prof Rituparna adding that he used to bring a Japanese delegation of students to India every year.
Prof Shambhunath and Prof Ved Prakash of the Department of Hindi said that by laying importance of the usage and teaching of foreign languages, developed countries like Japan have shown the world that new horizons can be achieved.
Professor Abdul Aleem Chairman of the department said that Hindi department accords welcome and a range lectures of eminent scholars and this function bears testimony to the efforts of the department to work for the spread of knowledge.
Prof Mohammad Tariq, Chairperson, Department of Urdu emphasised that Hindi and Urdu are closely linked to and depend on each other for their survival and it is wrong to associate the languages with particular communities. "Every year, Hindu students get enrolled in the Urdu graduation, post-graduation and Phd programmes in AMU and similarly we have Muslim teachers and students of Hindi language," he said.
Prof Abdul Alim, Chairperson, Department of Hindi; Prof Shafey Kidwai, Chairperson, Department of Mass Communication; Prof Kamalanand Jha; Prof M Q H Faridi, In-charge, Research Association, Department of Urdu and Prof Mehtab Haider Naqvi, Incharge, Anjuman-Urdu-e-Moalla were present on the occasion.
Prof Mohammad Tariq and Abhishek Dubey conducted the programmes.
