Bhilai, Sep 23: The satire columns of newspapers and magazines have enriched, empowered and popularized the satire genre right from the era of Bharatendu to the Parsai. At the same time, contemporary satire does not seem to have the same courage as its predecessors because we are going through a period of safe writing.
These ideas emerged in the national webinar of a group of country’s renowned satirists. Famous satirists Vinod Sao and Shashikant Singh Shashi shared their views on the topic ‘Contemporary satire and Newspaper Columns’. They answered to the questions raised by other satirists in the webinar. The webinar was conducted by senior satirist Ramesh Saini and critic Professor Ramesh Tiwari. Expressing his views, senior satirist Vinod Sao said that columns made the satire genre rich and prosperous. The columns made satire popular among masses. The purpose of satire is public education and creating mass opinion. He gave detailed views on the newspaper column and contemporary satire through numerous examples which covered Bharatendu Harishchandra to Harishankar Parsai, Sharad Joshi, Shrilal Shukla, Manohar Shyam Joshi, Gyan Chaturvedi, Prem Janmejay and Ramesh Saini.
Senior satirist Shashikant Singh Shashi said that contemporary satire does not reflect the attitude that was found in the Parsai era. Today satire has shifted from populist perspective to entertainment. Today we are in the era of writing on the safe side, where the purpose of satirical writing is more to earn honours and awards. He dismissed the fact that satire cannot appear in its appropriate form and tone within a word limit of Newspaper Columns. He said that when a poet can speak so deep in couplets, then why the satirist cannot express in two hundred or four hundred words. Social and human concerns are important in a satire, he said.
Prabhashankar Upadhyay, Bulaki Sharma, Prabhat Goswami, Sanjay Purohit, Vivek Ranjan Srivastava, Anoop Shukla, Tikaram Sahu, Baldev Tripathi, Dilip Tetrave, Arun Arnav Khare, Sudhir Kumar Chaudhary and others raised significant questions in the webinar. Subject expert satirists Vinod Sao and Shashikant ‘Shashi’ answered to these questions.
The seminar was attended by satirists from various states of the country including Ishwar Sharma, Pilkendra Arora, Malay Jain, Alka Agarwal, Veena Singh, Kailash Mandlekar, Hanuman Mishra, Snehlata Pathak, Rajsekhar Choubey, Santosh Trivedi, Kumari Aparna and Renu Devpura. Satirist Rajasekhar Choubey proposed the vote of thanks.
