This evening a noted Hindi literary writer Tejinder Sharma, MBE will be talking to an academic linguist and minority Language activist Mahendra Verma about his journey from being a university lecturer in English and researcher in the comparative grammar of English and Hindi in India to being a crusader of Hindi as a heritage language in the UK, and the inspiration behind many becoming poets in Hindi and English for the first time under the banner of the Suniye-Sunaiye literary group. A number of these poets will be reading their poems from the newly published anthology SUNIYE-SUNAIYE KAVYA SANGRAH.
Mahendra Verma is a retired linguist and Director of the Hindi Language Teaching Programme in the Dept. of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York He has led the minority languages movement in the UK for their preservation from the front as Chair of the National Council for Mother Tongue Teaching. He has devoted his entire diaspora career in the UK in nurturing and preserving the heritage languages, Hindi in particular. He has taught Summer courses in Hindi at the University of Upsala, He organised the first Intensive course in Hindi-Urdu in the UK and residential courses in Training South Asian teachers at the University of York. He was awarded the Hindi Seva Samman by the UP Hindi Sansthan and the John Gilchrist Hindi Shikshan Samman by the High Commission of India, London.