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Akshar Mahotsav 2025
Lekhan Se Sulekhan: From Writing to Calligraphy
In an era where handwriting is fast receding into memory, Akshar Mahotsav 2025 reclaims writing as a living cultural practice. Organized by the Calligraphy Foundation in collaboration with national cultural institutions, the festival stands as India’s only dedicated platform celebrating scripts, calligraphy, and the pedagogy of writing. With its guiding theme “Lekhan Se Sulekhan”—from the everyday act of writing to its refinement as calligraphy—the Mahotsav underscores that the survival of calligraphy begins with the revival of handwriting itself.
Across three days, the festival will bring together workshops, exhibitions, demonstrations, and student-led initiatives that connect the tactile world of letters with contemporary cultural life. From Sharada inscriptions of the Himalayas to flowing Modi documents of Maharashtra, from palm-leaf Odia manuscripts to rhythmic Gurmukhi verses, the event highlights India’s linguistic plurality as a shared heritage. Structured modules will engage children, teachers, artists, and researchers alike—ensuring that writing is reintroduced not as nostalgia, but as pedagogy, mindfulness, and public culture.
Now in its fourth edition, Akshar Mahotsav has grown from an awareness initiative to a national cultural movement, aligned with NEP 2020, the National Mission for Manuscripts, and Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat. This year’s Mahotsav expands its scope with Sulekhan Kala Pradarshani 2025, Navankur Sulekhan for students, and performative sessions where calligraphy becomes living art. At its heart lies a simple truth: where letters flourish, culture thrives.
Calligraphy Workshops
Workshops at Akshar Mahotsav 2025 are immersive, practice-driven sessions that blend discipline with discovery. This year marks a significant shift—the festival opens with a full day dedicated to handwriting, reintroducing participants to the foundational art of forming letters with clarity, rhythm, and care.
The following days expand into calligraphy, offering guided explorations of tools, materials, and mediums. Participants will learn to craft scripts both as artistic expression and as academic study, moving from historical insight to contemporary application. Sessions range from technical practice to experimental design, integrating reed pens, brushes, digital tools, and unconventional surfaces.
More than skill-building, these workshops nurture creativity as a habit. They encourage learners of all ages to see writing not as routine, but as a craft that inspires originality, strengthens memory, and connects deeply with culture.
Calligraphy Sessions
Sessions at Akshar Mahotsav 2025 are designed as spaces where knowledge and creativity converge. Beyond artistic practice, they bring academic depth—inviting scholars, researchers, and practitioners to reflect on the cultural, historical, and contemporary life of scripts.
This year’s dialogues span a wide spectrum: from the study of inscriptions and manuscripts to explorations of tools and materials; from calligraphy as a meditative practice to its role in design thinking and visual communication. Each session blends research with practice, ensuring that participants encounter both intellectual clarity and artistic resonance.
For artists, students, educators, and enthusiasts, these conversations offer more than insight—they create connections across disciplines, encouraging curiosity, dialogue, and critical reflection. Together, the sessions reaffirm that calligraphy is not only an art form, but a living field of knowledge and cultural imagination.
Sulekhan Kala Pradarshini
(Calligraphy Exhibition)
Workshops at Akshar Mahotsav 2025 are immersive, practice-driven sessions that blend discipline with discovery. This year marks a significant shift—the festival opens with a full day dedicated to handwriting, reintroducing participants to the foundational art of forming letters with clarity, rhythm, and care.
The following days expand into calligraphy, offering guided explorations of tools, materials, and mediums. Participants will learn to craft scripts both as artistic expression and as academic study, moving from historical insight to contemporary application. Sessions range from technical practice to experimental design, integrating reed pens, brushes, digital tools, and unconventional surfaces.
More than skill-building, these workshops nurture creativity as a habit. They encourage learners of all ages to see writing not as routine, but as a craft that inspires originality, strengthens memory, and connects deeply with culture.
Manuscript Display
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Sessions at Akshar Mahotsav 2025 are designed as spaces where knowledge and creativity converge. Beyond artistic practice, they bring academic depth—inviting scholars, researchers, and practitioners to reflect on the cultural, historical, and contemporary life of scripts.
This year’s dialogues span a wide spectrum: from the study of inscriptions and manuscripts to explorations of tools and materials; from calligraphy as a meditative practice to its role in design thinking and visual communication. Each session blends research with practice, ensuring that participants encounter both intellectual clarity and artistic resonance.
For artists, students, educators, and enthusiasts, these conversations offer more than insight—they create connections across disciplines, encouraging curiosity, dialogue, and critical reflection. Together, the sessions reaffirm that calligraphy is not only an art form, but a living field of knowledge and cultural imagination.
Calligraphy Demonstrations
There is a rare vitality in seeing letters come alive before your eyes—the brush’s sweep, the ink’s rhythm, the silence that accompanies every stroke. At Akshar Mahotsav 2025, demonstrations extend beyond performance, becoming shared acts of cultural immersion.
This year, large-scale demonstrations will unfold in amphitheatre settings, where master calligraphers reveal the artistry of script as living heritage. Yet the experience does not end with observation. Each participant is invited to step forward—handling the same tools, tracing the same materials, and sensing the script’s weight in their own hand.
In this collective exchange, writing transforms into ritual. The gestures of calligraphy merge with rhythm, movement, and presence, affirming that letters are not only to be watched—they are to be lived, practiced, and carried forward together.
Panel Discussions
Panel discussions at Akshar Mahotsav 2025 will provide a vital forum where tradition meets pedagogy and practice meets policy. For the first time, The Calligraphy Foundation positions calligraphy not only as cultural expression but as structured education—offering curricula for schools, universities, and teacher training.
In this spirit, the Mahotsav will host comprehensive dialogues with experts from calligraphy, fine arts, design, linguistics, and education. These discussions will explore how writing can shape learning ecosystems, from early handwriting practice to advanced script studies.
Framed within the cultural setting of the National Museum, the panels will address the future of calligraphy as both discipline and profession—asking how scripts can be taught, researched, and integrated into contemporary education. They stand as deliberations for a new era: where letters enter classrooms as knowledge, memory, and art.
Navankur Sulekhan Corner
The Navankur Sulekhan Corner at Akshar Mahotsav 2025 is a dedicated space for young learners to encounter the joy of writing as discovery. Conceived by The Calligraphy Foundation to introduce calligraphy to students aged eight and above, this initiative transforms letters into playful, participatory experiences.
This year, a full day of activities is devoted to schoolchildren, offering guided workshops, storytelling with scripts, and group calligraphy exercises. Under the care of mentors and volunteers, students will not only learn to shape letters but also explore their cultural stories through clay, colour, fabric, and collaborative murals.
Through Navankur Sulekhan, The Calligraphy Foundation reaffirms its commitment to nurturing dedicated calligraphy learners at the foundational level—ensuring that young participants gain early exposure to India’s diverse scripts and grow with a clear sense of curiosity, discipline, and cultural pride.
Hands-On Activities
At Akshar Mahotsav 2025, hands-on activities form the bridge between structured learning and playful exploration. The Calligraphy Foundation believes that true understanding of scripts emerges not only through lectures but through doing—through the tactile joy of shaping letters with one’s own hand.
This year’s activities invite participants to experience calligraphy in diverse forms, like last year we had writing postcards at Aao Khat Likhe, crafting clay rakhis in Mitti Se Bandhan, printing motifs in Carved Creations, designing miniature artworks in Coaster Creations, and experimenting with florals, dot mandalas, and clay modeling. Each session becomes a space where creativity, material, and memory converge.
More than recreation, these activities cultivate focus, imagination, and pride in the written word—making the Mahotsav not just a festival to watch, but a festival to touch, create, and carry home as lived experience.
Journey So Far
