Varanasi: Nagari Pracharini Sabha president Vyomesh Shukla while recalling the contributions of legendary litterateur Bharatendu Harishchandra on his 177th birth anniversary said the poet is the pioneer of modern Hindi literature.While addressing a gathering at Bharatendu Bhavan, the ancestral residence of literature, Shukla on Wednesday described Bharatendu as a figure who embodied both tradition and its reasoned transgression. He said Bharatendu reconciled contradictions between scripture and folk culture, knowledge and art, elite and common sensibilities, women and men, Hindi and English, Khari Boli and Braj. He termed Bharatendu Bhavan a pilgrimage site for Hindi.Presiding over the event, UP minister Dayashankar Mishra ‘Dayalu’ said that growing up amid Banaras’s lanes, institutions and historic personalities was a rare gift.Scholars, doctors and local dignitaries attended the event.
