Evaluation of Shree Mohanbhai S. Patel’s Book - Gujarati Bal-Sahitya: Darshan ane Disha: A Study

Abstract

This study interrogates Mohanlal Shankarlal Patel’s insights presented in Gujarati Bal-Sahitya: Darshan ane Disha to assess the present condition and possible future development of Gujarati children’s literature. Divided into two principal sections, the inquiry first surveys Patel’s observations on the substantial yet underestimated place of children’s literature within the Gujarati tradition and the intersecting cultural and pedagogical difficulties that it endures. The latter section then advances the argument that literary portrayals for young audiences ought to include exemplars whose provenance extends across the entirety of Indian civilisation, thereby nurturing an enduring consciousness of cultural lineage. Patel, whose deep dedication to educational progress is widely acknowledged, mourns the waning vitality of traditional storytelling once stewarded by wise elder women whose voices braided cultural wisdom and ethical imperatives into the hearts of children. The ascendancy of Western media figures has eclipsed these indigenous narratives. Though animation has burgeoned in India, the majority of present-day protagonists compete in Hindi, marginalising young speakers of Gujarati whose fluency in the vernacular is eclipsed by commercial imperatives. The present work contends that the urgent revitalisation of Gujarati children’s literature must proceed with the deliberate creation of resonant cultural heroes and a broadening of media channels, thereby cultivating a future in which Gujarati texts arbitrate formative influence and invigorate the imaginative contours of the society they once, and could once more, cradle.