BHU Non-Teaching Staff Bring Original Hindi Poetry to Committee-Room Stage

VARANASI: The committee room at Banaras Hindu University became a poetry venue on Saturday, September 12, as 20 non-teaching employees took part in a competition devoted to their own Hindi compositions. The event formed part of the university’s Hindi Month 2026 programme.

The participants chose subjects close to the institution and its setting: Hindi, India, Kashi, university founder Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya and BHU itself. Their entries were original poems, making the exercise one of writing as well as public recitation.

Prof. Vashishtha Anoop, Dr Sanjeev Saraf and Prof. Urvashi Gehlot served on the judging panel. The assessment considered the poems, their presentation and their subject matter. The available event account did not announce a list of winners or individual scores.

Hindi officer Dr Shiv Kumar Tripathi presented mementos to the judges. Dr Ramesh Singh conducted the proceedings, while Anshuman Patel delivered the vote of thanks. Assistant registrar Vikas Kumar and colleagues were among those supporting the arrangements.

Employees as writers

The choice of participants gives this event a distinct place in the campus calendar. It was organised for non-teaching personnel, rather than as a student poetry contest. People whose everyday university roles lie outside classroom teaching were invited to contribute through creative work.

An original-poetry format also asks something different from a recital of a familiar published piece. The person at the microphone is responsible for the language and shape of the poem, not only its delivery. Writing and speaking become parts of the same entry.

The subjects described in the competition account brought institutional memory into that exercise. Malaviya’s role in founding BHU appeared alongside the city’s cultural heritage and the place of Hindi in participants’ lives. Those were themes explored by the writers, not claims of new historical research.

A programme beyond formal correspondence

A university language programme can encompass more than the use of Hindi in notices and office files. Saturday’s competition placed individual expression in that setting, allowing employees to approach a shared institutional occasion through different subjects and voices.

The account does not provide the complete poems, so it would be premature to describe a particular entry as humorous, experimental or prize-winning. Nor does it establish that the compositions will be collected in a book. Those details would require a separate announcement.

What the event does establish is participation: 20 employees presented writing of their own before a three-member panel. The next useful record would be the results, if the university releases them, together with any authorised publication of the work. For now, the competition adds an employee-led literary contribution to BHU’s Hindi Month activities.