Office of the Deputy Chief Minister, Government of Delhi

26th September, 2019

Need to instill value system in children through literature ― Dy CM Manish Sisodia

“Our writers need to undo the conditioned learning of our children from fairy tales by providing real stories. ― Dy. CM Manish Sisodia

Dy CM Manish Sisodia felicitated writers of Children’s Literature at the Urdu Academy, Delhi.

New Delhi: Shri Manish Sisodia, Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, attended the International Conference on Children’s literature – Adaab-e-Atfaal: Simt-o-Raftar, organised by the Urdu Academy here on Thursday. The event started with the Deputy CM felicitating authors of Urdu literature and releasing a set of 25 books published by the team at Gul Bootey.

Shri Manish Sisodia in his address thanked Professor Shehpar Rasool, Vice Chairman, Urdu Academy, Shri S. M . Ali , Secretary, Urdu Academy and Shri Farooque Syed, Editor, Gul Bootey for inviting him to be a part of the conference.
While talking about the need to improve the quality of children’s literature and the conditioned mind set it imposes on its young readers, Shri Manish Sisodia said, “While writing stories for children, we should make sure that we understand their minds first. Understanding ‘baal mann’ is the need of the hour. While writing about fairy tales gives false hopes to our children, we are also instilling distorted mind sets in them. Beautiful princess stories makes our child think that outer beauty is required to be loved in the society. And hence, we can see the demand for fairness creams amongst youngsters. Gender roles are also defined through stories, when our child reads a story in which its mentioned that the father goes to the market to fetch vegetables while the mother stays back to cook in the kitchen. We are defining these roles, and teaching the wrong mindset. This needs to be undone and for this we need the help of our writers.”

The Urdu Academy, on the last day of this International Conference on Children’s Literature, also celebrated the 25th Anniversary of Gul Bootey- a monthly magazine for children published from Mumbai. Addressing the audience, the editor of the Gul Bootey magazine, Shri Farooque Sayyed said, ” It is indeed an unforgettable event where renowned authors of children’s literature from across the country have gathered here at the Conference. For us, it was a dream to take out a magazine dedicated to children, and that dream came true in the form of Gul Bootey which we have been publishing for the past 25 years.”

A set of 25 books on children’s literature were also released by Shri Manish Sisodia.