Emergence of vernaculars is one of the remarkable linguistic trends of the ongoing digital era.
But, languages don’t just pop out of thin air. They carry with them a legacy that never gets old. It
is de facto fresh as new at all stages of their being, in the form of their particular literature. One
could almost say that given a literary character, they are an antidote to time. Issuing from the last
phases of the Prakrit language, Hindi literature is not only an exalted museum of about a
thousand years, but also it is a joyous pilgrimage to the very heart of Here and Now.
With a staggering rise in the number of Hindi readers, several spaces have appeared on the
internet in a bid to cater to the rising demand, but none as vast and authentic as ‘Hindwi’
<www.hindwi.org> that currently has a collection of more than 15,000 verses of over 750 poets-
ranging from the antiquity to the contemporary.
“The vision behind hindwi.org,” says Dharmendra Saha, General Manager, Rekhta
Foundation, “is to create the largest digital repository of Hindi literature, as we are doing with
rekhta.org for Urdu literature, preserving the classical heritage, while also facilitating a platform
for education and research purposes. The website already has a vast corpus of poetry and prose,
in addition to blogs, anecdotes, and dictionary among other features and the process of enriching
it further is constantly underway.”
Google had recently shared that Hindi is the second-most used language globally on a wide
range of its products. The vernacular’s web consumption is second only to English and has
grown over 90 per cent during 2015-16. Hindwi is a path-breaking attempt to compile all Hindi
literature at one place and make it available to the online readers in an easy to access, organized
and authenticate digital form.
Rekhta Foundation has been focused on its goal of preserving and promoting the literary heritage
of the sub-continent ever since its inception. Its first enterprise - rekhta.org- has already been
catering to these interests of Urdu speakers for more than a decade and hindwi.org is its attempt
to endeavor the same in the literary domain of Hindi.
Hindwi features the works of around 750 poets divided into 7939 poems, 1098 padas, 1604
dohas and 389 folksongs. All of these works are further grouped under demonstrative
classifications of prosodic features, editors’ choice, representative works and literary eras of their
composition etc. In addition to it, hindwi.org also provides its users with a rich and fresh array of
Hindi blogs. It has been connecting with social media users in ever increasing numbers since itshttps://www.hindwi.org/
Google’s Verse by Verse allows the users to rekindle their old love for poetry.
By offering innovative suggestions, the software aims to take users to a road less traveled.
