Anwar Jalalpuri, an academician and author has taken up the task of translating Shlokas from the Bhagvad Gita into Urdu verses.
Jalalpuri is a lecturer of English literature at an intermediate college in Jalalpur in Faizabad district of Uttar Pradesh. The initiative is outstanding and if successful, according to the colleagues and members of academia, would be a great step in the direction of communal and ethnic harmony.
The author expressed displeasure about the mutual ignorance, which two communities harbour. The Gita is very popular book of Hindus. He wants to popularise the great epic to make it accessible in a much more pervasive medium --music.
Speaking to ANI Jalalpuri said: "We live in a diverse society where Muslims and Hindus have co-existed for centuries. But they are mutually unacquainted with the great scriptures of one another.”
“I took up The Gita as I was of the opinion that it must be explained, read and analysed,” he added.
Other academicians, colleagues and students of Jalalpuri appreciate the socio-cultural importance of the work, the poet has undertaken, which is unprecedented, in their view.