Latta baraiya

Comparative Studies Unit 2

Hello everyone, I'm Latta Baraiya, a student of the department of English, MKBU. In this blog I'm going to discuss the articles on Contemporary Literature and Translation Studies. This task is assigned by our professor Dilip Barad sir. So let's begin with an article on Contemporary Literature.

4. 'What is comparative Literature Today ?' Comparative Literature : A Critical Introduction by Susan Bassnett.

Abstract :- Sooner or later, anyone who claims to be working in comparative literature has to try and answer the inevitable question : What is it ? The simplest answer is that comparative literature involves the study of texts across cultures, that it is interdisciplinary and that it is concerned with patterns of connection in literature across both time and space. Susan Bassnett gives a critical understanding of Comparative literature. She says that there is no particular object for studying comparative literature. Another thing is, we cannot give a definite term for comparative literature. Different authors of literature give various perspectives about comparative literature. The popular understanding of comparative literature means different cultures across the world, expressed in the history of literature.

key Arguments :-

Critics at the end of the twentieth century,in the age of postmodernism,still wrestle with the same questions that were posed more than a century ago:

“What is the object of the study in comparative literature? How can comparison be the objective of anything? If individual literatures have canon,what might a comparative canon be? How can be comparatist select what to compare ?Is comparative literature a discipline? Or is it simply a field of study ?”

Susan Bassnett argues that there are different terms used by different scholars for comparative literature studies. Therefore, we cannot put it in a single compartment for comparative literature.
The second thing she argues is that the west students of 1960 claimed that comparative literature could be put in single boundaries for comparative literature study, but she says that there is no particular method used for claiming.

Analysis :-

The comparative literature has been developed through the progress of the world and through various cultures of different continents. A different cultures of the continents have played a vital role in comparative literature studies, be it European, African, American and Eastern so on. Matthew Arnold in his Inaugural lecture at Oxford in 1857 when he said :

“Everywhere there is connection, everywhere there is illustration. No single event,no single literature is adequately comprehend except in relation to other events,to other literature.”

Goethe is termed Weltliteratur. Goethe noted that he liked to “keep informed about foreign productions’ and advised anyone else to do the same.It is becoming more and more obvious to me,”he remarked, “that poetry is the common property of all mankind.”

Benedetto Croce argued that comparative literature was a non-subject, contemptuously dismissing the suggestion that it might be seen as a separate discipline. Wellek and Warren in their Theory of Literature, a book that was enormously significant in comparative literature when it first appeared in 1949,suggest that :

“Comparative Literature …will make high demands on the linguistic proficiencies of our scholars.It asks for a widening of perspectives, a suppression of local and provincial sentiments, not easy to achieve.”

Conclusion :-

Comparative literature could not be brought under one umbrella unless it becomes a particular branch of the discipline of literature. There are a lot of efforts being taken to study comparative literature through a common language that is done in translation, which is understood by all people. Comparative Literature has traditionally claimed translation as a sub-category,but this assumption is now being questioned.The work of scholars such as Toury,Lefevere,Hermans,Lembert and many others has shown that translation is especially at moments of great cultural changes. Evan Zohar argued that extensive translation activity takes place when a culture is in a period of translation :when it is expanding,when it needs renewal,when it isin a pre-revolutionary phase,then translation plays a vital part.

5. Todd Presner, ‘Comparative Literature in the Age of Digital Humanities: On Possible Futures for a Discipline’ in Ali Behdad and Thomas eds. A Companion to Comparative Literature’

Abstract :-

After five hundred years of print and the massive

transformations in society and culture that it unleashed, we are in the midst of another watershed moment in human history that is on par with the invention of the printing press or perhaps the discovery of the New World. This article focuses on the questions like it is essential that humanists assert and insert themselves into the twenty - first century cultural wars, which are largely being defined, fought, and won by corporate interests.

Why, for example, were humanists, foundations, and universities conspicuously – even scandalously – silent when Google won its book search lawsuit and, effectively, won the right to transfer copyright of orphaned books to itself? Why were they silent when the likes of Sony and Disney essentially engineered the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, radically restricting intellectual property, copyright, and sharing? The Manifesto is a call to Humanists for a much deeper engagement with digital culture production, publishing, access, and ownership. If new technologies are dominated and controlled by corporate and entertainment interests, how will our cultural legacy be rendered in new media formats? By whom and for whom?

Key Arguments :-

Comparative Literature since they raise questions that have formed the methodological, disciplinary, and institutional foundation of a wide - range of academic fi elds in the Humanities, including history and art history, literary and cultural studies, and the humanistic social sciences, such as anthropology, archaeology, and information studies.
If new technologies are dominated and controlled by corporate and entertainment inter ests, how will our cultural legacy be rendered in new media formats? By whom and for whom? These are questions that Humanists must urgently ask and answer.
The question that we need to confront in the fourth information age concerns the specifi city of the digital medium vis - à - vis other media formats, the various kinds of cultural knowledge produced, the ways of analyzing it, the various platforms that support it, and, fi nally, the modes of authorship and reception that facilitate new architectures of participation and new architectures of power.
Who is an author? What is a work? What constitutes a text, particularly in an environment in which any text is readerly and writerly by potentially anyone?
Comparative Media Studies thus enables us to return to some of the most fundamental questions of our fi eld with new urgency: Who is an author? What is a work? What constitutes a text, particularly in an environment in which any text is readerly and writerly by potentially anyone?
Google has already digitized and indexed more than ten million books, allowing scholars to perform ever - more complex searches, discover patterns, and potentially export large datasets derived from the digital book repository into other applications (such as Geographic Information Systems) in order to pursue quantitative questions such as statistical correlations, publishing histories, and semantic analyses as well as qualitative, hermeneutical questions. Spurred by the work of Lev Manovich and Noah Wardrip - Fruin, the fi eld of “ cultural analytics ” has emerged over the past fi ve years to bring the tools of high - end computational analysis and data visualization to dissect large - scale cultural datasets. 8 Such datasets might include historical data that have been digitized, such as every shot in the fi lms of Vertov or Eisenstein, the covers and content of every magazine published in the United States in the twentieth century, or the collected works of Milton, not to mention contemporary, real - time data fl ows such as tweets, SMS messaging, or search trends. Because meaning, argumentation, and interpretative work are not limited to the “ insides ” of texts or necessarily even require “ close ” readings, Comparative Data Studies allows us to use the computational tools of cultural analytics to enhance literary scholarship precisely by creating models, visualizations, maps, and semantic webs of data that are simply too large to read or comprehend using unaided human faculties. My point here is not to pitch “close” hermeneutical readings against “distant” data mappings, but rather to appreciate the synergistic possibilities between a hyper - localized, deep analysis and a macrocosmic view.

Analysis :-

Comparative Media Studies

For Nelson, a hypertext is a:-

Body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such a complex way that it could not conveniently be presented or represented on paper [ … ] Such a system could grow indefinitely, gradually including more and more of the world ’ s written knowledge. (Nelson, 2004: pp. 134 – 145)

Comparative Authorship and Platform Studies :-

James Boyle points out, there are many corporate entities eager to regulate the public domain and control the “commons of the mind.” 10 For Boyle, the real danger is not unauthorized file sharing but “ failed sharing ” due to enclosures and strictures placed upon the world of the creative commons (Boyle, 2008 : p. 182). Scholars such as McKenzie Wark and Kathleen Fitzpatrick have even “ published ” early versions of their entire books on Commentpress.

Comparative Data Studies:-

Lev Manovich and Noah Wardrip - Fruin, the field of “ cultural analytics ” has emerged over the past five years to bring the tools of high - end computational analysis and data visualization to dissect large - scale cultural datasets. Jerome McGann argues with regard to the first in his elegant analysis of “ radiant textuality, ” the differences between the codex and the electronic versions of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Conclusion :- This article mainly focuses on the twenty-first century in terms of digital humanities and how we are doing comparative studies. After discussing various arguments, we come to know that to date, it has more than three million content pages, more than three hundred million edits, over ten million registered users, and articles in forty - seven languages (Wikipedia Statistics). This is a massive achievement for eight years of work. Wikipedia represents a dynamic, flexible, and open - ended network for knowledge creation and distribution that underscores process, collaboration, access, interactivity, and creativity, with an editing model and versioning system that documents every contingent decision made by every contributing author. At this moment in its short life, Wikipedia is already the most comprehensive, representative, and pervasive participatory platform for knowledge production ever created by humankind. In my opinion, that is worth some pause and reflection, perhaps even by scholars in a future disciplinary incarnation of Comparative Literature.

Comparative Studies Unit 1

1.First article is about 'Why comparative Indian Literature ?' by Sisir Kumar Das.

Abstract :- In this article we can see that Sisir Kumar Das talks about in the beginning of the century some of the scholars tried upon the idea of an Indian Literature emphasizing the unity of themes and forms and attitudes between the different literatures produced in different Indian languages during the last three thousand years. Further we can see that about this thought of comparison

Coming back to the nature of Comparative Literature as taught in India, the epigraph by Sisir Kumar Das states the pressing concern of relationships that exist between Indian literatures. It is also the comparatist’s need to move away from narrow geographical confines and move towards how literatures across the subcontinent are to be understood in their totality (Das:96–97).

Key Arguments :- In the article we find these arguments,

For a country like India which has a history of literary traditions oscillating between script and orature, new methods of teaching and reading were to be envisioned. While dealing with the formal elements that go into the making of any text in India—which shares a similarity with African situations in terms of oral, written and indigenous sources (Thiongʼo 1993)— identification of these methods as contours which aid in the reading of literature would apply.
According to Das, the necessity of evolving a framework when two distinct languages/cultures encountered was inevitable. Das states in this regard:Arabic, Japanese with Chinese and Indians with the literatures of Europe. All these contacts have resulted in certain changes, at times marginal, and at time quite profound and pervasive, in the literary activities of the people involved, and have necessitated an enlargement of critical perspective‖(S. K. Das 18).
Translation brought world-renown to a number of regional writers. In ―The Task of the Translator, Walter Benjamin argues that translation does not conceal the original, but allows it to shine through, for translation effectively ensures the survival of a text (Bassnett 180).

Analysis :- if we analyse the article we come to know about the starting situation of comparison and translation effect. Here we find that Das ascertains how Indian scholars in the ancient period did not endeavour to explore such connections between the two languages. Sisir Kumar Das said that,

Indian Literature is comparative literature.

Das has a clear insight into this phenomenon that may be owing to myopic tendencies and the lack of a framework to place literatures from two linguistic roots. Das forgets to mention that there were no appropriate frameworks to study identity politics that went beyond the frontiers of language in a country strongly informed by caste hierarchies, the subjugation of women and the suppression of the LGBT. And even when literature shifted from nation bases to identity bases it happened outside the discipline of comparative literature.

Conclusion :- In his article, "Comparative Literature in India," Amiya Dev bases his discussion on the fact that India has many languages and literatures thus representing an a priori

situation and conditions of diversity. He therefore argues that to speak of Indian literature in the singular is problematic. Nonetheless, Dev also observes that to speak of Indian literature in the plural is equally problematic. Such a characterization, he urges, either overlooks or obscures manifest interrelations and affinities. His article compares the unity and the diversity thesis, and identifies the relationship between Indian commonality and differences as the prime site of comparative literature in India. He surveys the current scholarly and intellectual positions on unity and diversity and looks into the post-structuralist doubt of homogenization of differences in the name of unity. Dev also examines the search for common denominators and a possible pattern of togetherness and Dev underlines location and located inter-Indian reception as an aspect of inter-literariness.

2.Second article is about 'Comparative Literature in India' by Amiya Dev.

Abstract :- In his article, "Comparative Literature in India," Amiya Dev bases his discussion on the fact that India has many languages and literatures thus representing an a priori situation and conditions of diversity.

Key Arguments :-

Richard Pierre mentioned that In studying comparative literature, you will consider literature from different genres,locations, and time periods simultaneously. Beyond that, comparative literature thinks across different disciplines, like literature and music on literature and anthropology. Finally, comparative literature is also the de facto home of literary theory; some consider the field to be concerned with the general makeup of literature itself, or literariness.
Choudhari said, “Our culture has taught us to ask questions and our literature is a compilation of all answers thus found. It is our culture to learn by asking questions as having discussions and arguments are part of upbringing.” (the times of india , February 15 , 2019)
Gurbhagat Singh who has been discussing the notion of "differential multilogue" . He does not accept the idea of Indian literature as such but opts for the designation of literatures produced in India. Further, he rejects the notion of Indian literature because the notion as such includes and promotes a nationalist identity
Aijaz Ahmad's In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. Ahmad describes the construct of a "syndicated" Indian literature that suggests an aggregate and unsatisfactory categorization of Indian literature . Ahmad also rules out the often argued analogy of Indian literature with that of European literature by arguing that the notion of "European literature" is at best an umbrella designation and at worst a pedagogical imposition while Indian literature is classifiable and categorizable.

Analysis :-

It is true that the ideal of one language in India had been made real by now ideological and political mechanisms. The official national language is Hindi and if literary texts from the other languages could be translated into Hindi, we could possibly arrive at a national Indian literature. However, in this case we would again arrive at a hegemonizing situation. On the other hand, it is clear that in the realm of education, English is the largest single language program in our colleges and universities.

Das's work on the literatures of the nineteenth century in India does not designate this Indian literature a category by itself. Rather the work suggests a rationale for the proposed research, the objective being to establish whether a pattern can be found through the ages. One age's pattern may not be the same as another age's and this obviously preempts any given unity of Indian literature.

Conclusion :-

Amiya Dev suggests that we should first look at ourselves and try to understand our own situations as thoroughly as possible. Let us first give full shape to our own comparative literature and then we will formulate a comparative literature of diversity in general.

Comparative literature has taught us not to take comparison literally and it also taught us that theory formation in literary history is not universally tenable.

3. Third article is about 'Comparative Literature in India : An Overview of its History' by Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta.

Abstract :- The essay gives an overview of the trajectory of Comparative Literature in India, focusing primarily on the department at Jadavpur University, where it began, and to some extent the department of Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies in the University of Delhi, where it later had a new beginning in its engagement with Indian literature. The department at Jadavpur began with the legacy of Rabindranath Tagore’s speech on World Literature and with a modern poet-translator as its founder. While British legacies in the study of literature were evident in the early years, there were also subtle efforts towards a decolonizing process and an overall attempt to enhance and nurture creativity. Gradually Indian literature began to receive prominence along with literatures from the Southern part of the globe. Paradigms of approaches in comparative literary studies also shifted from influence and analogy studies to cross-cultural literary relations, to the focus on reception and transformation. In the last few years Comparative Literature has taken on new perspectives, engaging with different areas of culture and knowledge, particularly those related to marginalized spaces, along with the focus on recovering new areas of non-hierarchical literary relations.

The Beginnings:

It was Rabindranath Tagore who give this term ‘VishvaSahitya’ and started the world generally termed comparative literature. Buddhadev Bose, one of the prime factors of modern Bengali poetry and he did not fully subscribe to the ideal of Tagore. Buddhadev Translated Baudelaire. Sudhindranath Dutta, also well-known for his translation of Mallarmé and his erudition both in the Indian and the Western context, to teach in the department of Comparative Literature. Of the first five students in the department, three became well-known poets and the fourth a fine critic of Bengali poetry. The person who took charge from Buddhadeva Bose was again a poet, Naresh Guha, who remained as Chairperson of the department for two decades. In an interview given to us in his last years he emphasized the role of the department in fostering an intensely creative environment. This part of article is about the beginning od comparative literature in India.

Indian Literature as Comparative Literature

Comparatists dealing with Indian literature also necessarily had to look at the interplay between the mainstream and the popular, the elite and the marginalized and also to some extent foreground intermedial perspectives as different forms existed together in a composite manner, particularly in earlier periods in which textual and performative traditions existed simultaneously.
The department continues to develop teaching material on various aspects of Indian literature from a comparative perspective, beginning from language origins, manuscript cultures, performative traditions along with painting, sculpture and architecture, the history of print culture and questions related to modernity. That Comparative Literature studies necessarily had to be interdisciplinary was highlighted by the pedagogy practiced in the department.
T.S. Satyanath developed the theory of a scripto-centric, body-centric and phonocentric study of texts in the medieval period leading a number of researchers in the department to look for continuities and interventions in the tradition that would again lead to pluralist epistemologies in the study of Indian literature and culture.

Centers of Comparative Literature Studies

● In 1986 a new full-fledged department of Comparative Literature was established at Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Surat, where the focus was on Indian literatures in Western India.

● Also in 1999 a department of Dravidian Comparative Literature and Philosophy was established in Dravidian University, Kuppam. It must also be mentioned that comparative poetics, a core area of comparative literature studies and dissertations, particularly in the South, was taken up as a central area of research by the Visvanatha Kaviraja Institute of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics in Orissa.

● During this period two national associations of Comparative Literature came into being, one at Jadavpur called Indian Comparative Literature Association and the other in Delhi named Comparative Indian Literature Association.

● The two merged in 1992 and the Comparative Literature Association of India was formed, which today has more than a thousand members. In the early years of the Association, a large number of creative writers participated in its conferences along with academics and researchers, each enriching the horizon of vision of the other.

Reconfiguration of areas of comparison

● Along with Indian literatures, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude became a part of the syllabus with a few other texts from Latin American Literatures and then Literatures from African countries were included.

● As for the other Area Studies components, the department today hosts Centres for African, Latin American and Canadian studies where some research work and annual seminars are organized. A few, like the present author, are of the opinion that given the relatively small number of faculty in the department, the Area Studies programmes led to a division of the scarce resources and also diverted attention from some of the key challenges in comparative literature studies in India, namely, the systematic amalgamation of data related to the Indian context and its analysis from comparative perspectives, and also perhaps the mapping of intercultural relations with and among India’s neighbouring countries.

● Burns and Wordsworth were very popular and it was felt that their romanticism was marked by an inner strength and serenity. The much talked about ‘angst’ of the romantic poet was viewed negatively. The love for serenity and ‘health’ went back to the classical period and seemed an important value in the tradition.

● Again while Shelley and Byron were often critiqued, the former for having introduced softness and sentimentality to Bengali poetry, they were also often praised for upholding human rights and liberty in contrast to the imperialist poetry of Kipling. Contemporary political needs then were linked with literary values and this explained the contradictory tensions often found in the reception of romanticism in Bengal. It must be mentioned that Shelley, the poet of revolt, began to have a very positive reception when the independence movement gathered momentum.

● In another context, a particular question that gained prominence was whether Shakespeare was imposed on Indian literature, and comparatists showed, as did Sisir Kumar Das, that there were different Shakespeares. Shakespeare’s texts might have been imposed in the classroom, but the playwright had a rich and varied reception in the world of theatre.

● From reception studies the focus gradually turned to cross-cultural reception where reciprocity and exchange among cultures were studied. For example, one tried to study the Romantic Movement from a larger perspective, to unravel its many layers as it travelled between countries, particularly between Europe and India. The translation of several texts from Sanskrit into German played a role in the emergence of the Romantic movement and then in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Romanticism came back to India, though in different shades.

● Reception studies both along vertical and horizontal lines formed the next major area of focus - one studied for instance, elements of ancient and medieval literature in modern texts and also inter and intraliterary relations foregrounding impact and responses.

● While one studied Vedic, Upanishadic, Buddhist and Jaina elements in modern texts, one also looked at clusters of sermons by Buddha, Mahavira and Nanak, at qissas and katha ballads across the country, the early novels in different Indian literatures, and then the impact of Eastern literature and thought on Western literature and vice versa.

● With the introduction of the semester system the division was abandoned and certain other courses of a more general nature such as Cross-cultural Literary Transactions, where Rudyard Kipling’s Kim and Rabindranath Tagore’s Gora, were taken up, or sometimes in courses entitled Literary Transactions one looked more precisely at the tradition of Reason and Rationalism in European and Indian literatures of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries.

● The department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Saurashtra University, Rajkot, took up the theme of Indian Renaissance and translated several Indian authors into English, studied early travelogues from Western India to England and in general published collections of theoretical discourse from the nineteenth century.

● The Department of Assamese in Dibrugarh University received the grant and published a number of books related to translations, collections of rare texts and documentation of folk forms.

● The department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University also received assistance to pursue research in four major areas, East-West Literary Relations, Indian Literature, Translation Studies and Third World Literature. Incidentally, the department had in Manabendra Bandyopadhyay, an avid translator who translated texts from many so-called “third-world countries”.

● From a very different perspective it was felt that stories poems, songs and performances from oral traditions that were found in most parts of the country had their own knowledge systems that could provide valuable and sustainable alternatives to contemporary urban modes of life and living and in several cases also reveal certain cultural dynamics and value systems that were constantly replenishing mainstream expressive traditions.

● The second area in the Centre for Advanced Studies was the interface between literatures of India and its neighbouring countries.

● The first preliminary research in this area led to links that suggested continuity and a constant series of interactions between and among Asian cultures and communities since ancient times and the urgent need for work in this area in order to enter into meaningful dialogue with one another in the Asian context and to uncover different pathways of creative communications. Efforts towards this end led to an International Conference on South-South dialogues with a large number of participants from Asian and European countries. An anthology of critical essays on tracing socio-cultural and literary transactions between India and Southeast Asia was published.

● Among the projects planned under the inter-Asian series was one on travelogues from Bengal to Asian countries and here an annotated bibliography that could provide an initial foundation for the study of inter-literary relations was published. A second project involved working on the image of Burma in Bengali and Oriya literature in late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Travel narratives and diaries, newspaper articles from old periodicals, excerpts from literature and pictorial images of Burmese people in the Indian press were compiled.

Conclusion :- It must be mentioned at this point that Comparative Literature in the country in the 21st century engaged with two other related fields of study, one was Translation Studies and the other Cultural Studies. Translation Studies cover different areas of inter literary studies. Histories of translation may be used to map literary relations while analysis of acts of translation leads to the understanding of important characteristics of both the source and the target literary and cultural systems. As for Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature had always engaged with different aspects of Cultural Studies, the most prominent being literature and its relation with the different arts. Cultural Studies may also be a key component in different kinds of interdisciplinary courses within the discipline. For instance, a course in Delhi University takes up the theme of city and village in Indian literature and goes into representations of human habitat systems and ecology in literature, looks for concepts and terms for such settlements, goes into archaeological evidences and the accounts of travellers from Greece, China, Persia and Portugal to demonstrate the differences that exist at levels of perception and ideological positions.

Digital Portfolio Demonstration

7 March 2022,

Digital Portfolio Demonstration,

Department of English, MKBU.

Hello everyone, today we have a digital portfolio demonstration at the department of English. From the starting of our Masters journey, we are told to prepare our google site. In which we have to include all our activities, like presentations, assignments, thinking activities, YouTube videos etc. Our all academic and non academic writing as well as our creative corner we can add there in our site. In which we are supposed to write about what is Literature and what metaphor you gave to literature. I gave a metaphor 'Ship' to literature. Ship and literature both give us a wide view through it's window. As lighthouse guide helmsman, our teachers, critics, and society guide us to look at life and it's Problems

Other students, professors, our seniors, super seniors and our juniors are invited to visit our portfolio. Students of the economics department had come to see our portfolio. And others are there also. They ask us about our achievements and about our metaphor for literature. At the end Dilip Barad sir gave a final remark on our portfolio

Thanks to Vaidehi Hariyani madam and Yesha Bhatt madam for your guidance. These all things are done well. Thanks to Dilip Barad sir for making us digital citizens. The digital presence becomes important for everyone to know what is happening in the world

Here I'm sharing my digital portfolio link, if you haven't visited yet, please visit it

https://sites.google.com/view/lattabaraiyas-eportfolio/portfoli

Also give your feedback. Click here to give feedback

https://forms.gle/eykn7jg1ZfsE4XnC

Here are some glimpses,

Thank you.

Sports Committee Report

Sports and Recreation Committee from Baraiya Latta

This is the introductory presentation about Sports and Recreation Committee by me and Jignesh Panchasara.

Gardening Committee Report 2021-2022

Hello friends,

Myself Latta Baraiya and I'm a student of English Department, mkbu. In our department we have various twelve committees. One of them is the gardening committee. Me Latta Baraiya and Kishan Jadav are the leaders of the Gardening Committee.

(Latta Baraiya)

(Kishan Jadav)

Gardening Day 1 (15 August 2021)

We have arranged a gardening day. On 15th August 1947 India became independent. Every year this day is celebrated as Independence day. On this 75th Independence day, a flag hoisting ceremony was organised in our university (Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University). But to remember this day by doing something different, after the flag hoisting ceremony we have planned to clean our department garden. We have a total of 12 committees in our department. Each committee handles their subject matters. As we became seniors, we started taking our new responsibilities. As part of that me (Latta Baraiya) and Kishan Jadav we are the leaders of the gardening committee. So we arranged a gardening day.

Usually we send a message to our classmates to come to the department and join us in this activity. So first we collect all helping materials from store room like falcate (દાતરડી), brooms (સાવરણો), dustbin obviously 😀 etc.

We divided our work so it can be easy to clean up the garden in less time. Some are doing weed out, some are clearing leafs of trees, and some are catching plastics. By that time we infuse the Geru and lime (ચૂનો) for block colouring. And we did colouring of blocks also. We had lunch. It was delicious. We also took photos.

That activity was not compulsory but an independent choice. But many students came, it was a very memorable day. Here are some glimpses of our today's work,

And this is the introductory presentation made for new students of batch 2021-23.

Gardening Committee from Baraiya Latta

Gardening Day 2 (7 April 2022)

On 7th April 2022, we have done our second activity of cleaning the garden and coloring blocks. We were planning to clean our garden and plant trees for many days, and finally, we got permission from Dilip Barad sir to do that. We sent a message to all students to come early at 8 AM. Sir was not able to present because of his prior commitments, but Vaidehi Hariyani ma'am and Yesha Bhatt ma'am and many students joined us. Some students worked on cleaning, some were coloring the blocks and some of us have arranged the planting of Neem and Banyan trees. I wish all the upcoming batches will also actively participate in Gardening day.

Memory Tree Plantation (7 April 2022)

We have a tradition of Memory Tree Plantation in our department, in which students plant trees in the department garden as the memory of their batch. Gardening Committee Leaders are supposed to buy plants, geru, and other goods. The soil of the department garden is not fertile, so sir arranged fertile soil for planting. We bought two plants Neem and Banyan. Semester 2 students have planted a Neem tree and semester 4 students have planted a Banyan tree. Then we took a group photo. Here are the details of the amount we have spent.

Total amount = 980

No.	Plants & Goods	Price
1.	Banyan plant	650
2.	Neem plant	250
3.	Geru Power	40
4.	Lime	40
Total amount	980

As a leader of the gardening committee I have learnt many things. I never went to buy plants, but as a leader, me and my co-leader Kishan Jadav bought plants and bought other helping goods the day before plantation.

The time that is given to all students for gardening and plantation is 8 AM to 10 AM. But as a leader you have to come early before the given time. You also have to motivate students for work. It may happen, when some may not work and you can't force them. I learnt that,

A good leader is not someone who gives command, but a good leader is someone who works with members.

Overall it was a good experience. I would like to thank Dilip Barad sir for giving us this opportunity. Moreover I'm also thankful to Vaidehi Hariyani ma'am and Yesha Bhatt ma'am for their support, guidance and help. I also want to thank all the students who joined us in this activity. Here are some glimpses of today's event,