THE month-long Amar Ekushey Grantha Mela-2020 begins at Bangla Academy premises and at the adjoining Suhrawardy Udyan in the capital on Sunday. Actually, the Ekushey Book Fair is the national book fair of Bangladesh, which is arranged every year during February in Dhaka. This event is dedicated to the Martyrs who died on 21 February 1952 in a demonstration calling for the establishment of “Bangla” as the State language of former East Pakistan. This year, Bangla Academy has set the theme “Birth Centenary of Bangabandhu” for the fair as it will be dedicated to the Bengali’s iconic leader, Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, marking his birth centenary. Ekushey Book Fair is the first integrated expression of awakening the Bangalee nation against the repression of Pakistani rulers.
The book fair plays an important role in developing culture of the country too. In the course of time, various creative publishing organizations are being formed and the number of readers, literary and creative thinkers/practitioners has also increased. Not only people from different parts of the country but also book-loving Bangalees living abroad come to this fair. The gathering of intellectuals, teachers, students, media-workers, entrepreneurs of literary journals, Little Magazines, research organizations and cultural organizations and, above all, writers and readers makes this event of Ekushey of Bangla Academy unique. The fair has seen its share of controversial and violent events in the recent past as earlier, writer Humayun Azad on February 27, 2004 was attacked and blogger Avijit Roy was fatally attacked on the university campus on February 26, 2015. Since then security at the fair has been beefed up with such events not occurring again.
In the changing scenario after the introduction of different electronic gazettes, a large number of people have apparently lost interest in reading books; rather they like to read the online version of articles in the books or newspapers. Except adopting the new technology and without applying new technique, it will not easy for the publishers to meet the challenge in the future.
