Seeni Vishwanathan is among the people from Tamil Nadu this year who have been chosen to be decorated with the prestigious Padma awards.
His signal contribution is this – collating all the works of Subramania Bharathi, poet, journalist, writer, composer, freedom struggle activist and more.
The Padma award recognises the endeavour of Vishwanathan which has spread over 70 plus years.
On February 18, at 10 .30 a.m., Tamil Nadu governor R. N. Ravi will felicitate this Padma Shri awardee-designate at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mylapore.
That morning, besides the governor, a host of people including scholar Dr Sudha Seshayyan and arts promoter and businessperson Nalli Kuppuswami Chetti will speak on Vishwanathan and his signal work.
Alliance Publishers, considered to be the oldest publishing house in the city with its base in Mylapore, has published the 23 volumes of Bharathi’s works, collated and edited by Vishwanathan.
They cover essays and songs, journalism and stories and poetry and everything else that Bharathi has written.
This volume was formally released by prime minister Narendra Modi in Delhi in the presence of its editor and Alliance publisher, V. Srinivasan.
“Our safe guess is that these volumes contain almost 95% of Bharathi’s works,” says V. Srinivasan. “All the contents have been arranged in a chronological order based on the dates that each piece was written or published.”
The volumes cover some 15,000 pages and the set costs Rs.16,999.
Srinivasan says his team is hoping that libraries of leading colleges and universities in India will be encouraged to buy this set. He says some individuals have already bought the Bharathi set in recent times.
For details, call Alliance at 2464 1314.
