Citation of SAFMA May 2007 Award

Tribute to South Asia's "Cultural Ambassador"

Sh. Sanjay Godbole

The Honourable Shri Sanjay Godbole

You stand out as a versatile scholar in today's communication revolution, who reveals to us how the delicate ties of culture, reflected in our languages, literatures and the arts, have always bound the world together, even in periods when not many historical sources were available.

Your vision of history has transcended the conventional cataloguing of conflicts and coups, and the chronology of dynasties. You have honed your skills to relate closely to the people, the times they lived in and what they spoke, wrote, used and consumed.

You have the magic gift of reaching out smoothly over centuries of history, and entering into the very lives of people of the time, assessing their attitude, their values and the human condition. Your painstaking research and investigations into their artifacts and archives, sketches and relics, earthenware and metal vessels, have recreated for us even epochs wiped off from the palimpsest of time and history!

A living embodiment of your single-minded and magnificent obsession to converse with the past is your well-preserved Museum and Library of over 2,000 precious and rare books and exhibits at home. No wonder they have earned honourable mention in the Limca Book of Records! Your wonderful collection of books, precious manuscripts, rare paintings and photographs of Pune and other cities; terra-cotta vessels and some ancient musical instruments reveals your eclectic approach to the study of history.

Because of your special interest in the evolution of West Asian culture, and your abiding love for the Persian and Urdu languages, you have written seminal research articles on the nomadic Gypsy and Baluchi tribes of the area. Your documentary films (and short-film Naseem-e-Punah in Persian) along with evocative photographs of artifacts in your history museum in Pune, have received appreciative notices in West Asian cities of Teheran, Kabul, Istanbul and Turbat.

Many prestige publications in Pakistan and Iran have periodically published your well-studied articles on Pakistan. Magazines there have also published articles regarding your remarkable home library and museum, in Pune.

We, in the South Asian Forum and the Mumbai-Karachi Forum, respectfully salute a 'cultural ambassador' like Shri Sanjay Godbole, who helps so much to strengthen bonds of friendship and goodwill among people of India and Pakistan.

Source: Kashmir Sentinel