Sahitya Akademi's annual Festival of Letters began in New Delhi today. This year focus of the festival is on tribal, oral and North-Eastern literature. Noted writer Manoj Das inaugurated the the six day long festival. The Akademi is also organizing a Tribal Language Poetry festival today which will see tribal poets from across the country reciting poems in their native languages, followed by the respective translations in either Hindi or English.<br/><br/>During the six-day festival, Purvottari, a writers' meet for authors hailing from North and North Eastern India will also be organised. The Literature body will also felicitate the winning authors for the year 2015 tomorrow. <br/><br/>Akademi's annual 'Samvatsar' lecture will be delivered by eminent jurist and Gandhi scholar, Chandrashekhar Dharmadhikari, a three-day national seminar on "Gandhi, Ambedkar, Nehru: Continuities and Discontinuities" is also bing organised, where the relevance of the philosophies of these three builders of modern India will be deliberated upon. The seminar will be inaugurated by noted scholar Kapila Vatsayan.<br/><br/>A day long symposium on "Unwritten Languages of India" and a seminar of "Translational consciousness and literary traditions in India" will run parallely to the festival.<br/>The literary event is expected to see the participation of over 170 writers and literary scholars from across the country. <br/><br/>The festival will also feature a young writers' festival called Yuva Sahiti, and Spin-A-Tale for children besides a host of cultural performances from different parts of the country like Karma Dance from Odisha, Raslila and Pung Cholom from Manipur and Cheraw or Bamboo Dance from Mizoram. A qawwali performance by Nizami brothers and a Kathakali rendition of William Shakespeare's Othello will also be part of the festival. The festival is set to continue till 20th February.