NEW DELHI: The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is an intergovernmental organisation founded in Shanghai on June 15, 2001. It comprises eight member states (China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), four observer states interested in acceding to full membership (Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia) and six dialogue partners” (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey).
In its year of SCO presidency, India’s focus on young authors is interesting because great litterateurs across the world are known to have started young. This includes Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) from India who began his career with short stories in 1877 – when he was only 16-year-old.
Lu Xun (1881-1936), one of the greatest writers from China wrote his earliest essays in classical Chinese while he was attending school, and he published his first Chinese translations of famous and influential Western novels, including Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Another great writer, Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), too started writing in his 20s and his first novel, Childhood, was published in 1852.
These examples of some of the greatest writers coming from SCO region are just a pointer to the immense possibilities to have an institutionalised civilisational dialogue among the young writers from SCO member states.
