Bhagalpur, Feb. 13: The state minority commission and the Bhagalpur chapter of Bihar Bengalee Association have requested the government to declare the Bhagalpur Institute building a national edifice.
The two organisations, along with Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University, organised a two-day function that ended yesterday at Bhagalpur Institute to commemorate Rabindranath Tagore's 150th birth anniversary and the 102nd year of his visit to the silk city to preside over the 3rd Bangiya Sahitya Sammelan at the same venue in 1910.
Bhagalpur Institute is a club set up by the Bengali elites in 1834. The then zamindar of Adampur, Raja Sivchandra Benerjee, had donated land, while Sri Aurobindo's father, K.D. Ghosh, donated money and materials for the construction of the Bhagalpur Institute building.
Ram Bahal Tiwary, the former head of the Bengali department, Visva-Bharati University, said: "The building should be preserved and get a heritage status. It was at this institute where Tagore had for the first time given a clarion call to make Hindi the national language on the concluding day of the 3rd Bangiya Sahitya Sammelan."
Tiwary was the special guest of honour in the concluding session of the function. He expressed concern over the dilapidated condition of the building.
State minority commission deputy chairperson Capt. Dilip Sinha said: "Tagore's visit to the building was a historic event not only for Bhagalpur, but for the entire nation and those who speak Hindi. The poet had proposed that Hindusthani (the local language ' a mix of Awadhi, Khari and Brij Bhasa) be made a link language in the region."
Health minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey and BJP MP Shahnawaz Hussain attended the function among others.
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