Releasing the volume here on Saturday evening, noted Hindi ctitic Dr Namvar Singh said the Gujarati Vishwakosh was the biggest encyclopaedia among all Indian languages.

“This is the pride of Gujarat, and should be celebrated all over the state because it also happens to be a harbinger of a silent revolution of enlightenment,” said Singh. He said he doesn’t remember recalling another other organisation doing similar kind of work for any other Indian language, adding that an effort should now be made to let this work reach the people instead of letting it remain on the shelves.

Former director of IIM-A, Dr Pradeep Khandwala gave some interesting suggestions before the trustees about popularising the contents of the Guajrati Vishwakosh among the general public.

These included making it children-friendly, as well as adopting ways to reach its contents to illiterate and semi-literate people in the format suiting their requirements. He also suggested pocket editions of special focus on various technical subjects catering to the needs of different classes of persons, as well as to prepare a website on this with facility for period updates.

Dr Kumar Pal Desai, a trustee of the Gujarati Vishwakosh Trust, said the Vishwakosh was very popular in Mumbai because of the live subject content. The 23 volumes have 20 million words that carry 21,884 articles, he said. Each of these articles had undergone 24 processes before the final print, he added. Deepchand Gardi, 93, a major donor to the Trust, said things should not stop at the publication of 25 volumes as planned because much more was yet to be done like preparing CDs of the volumes published so far.

Litterateur Bholabhai Patel, who was honoured for being conferred the Padma Shri, also released three other books on this occasion -- Tarasya Malak no Megh by Manilal Patel, Shabda nu Sakhya by Dhirubhai Thakar, and a biography of Vinod Kinariwala by Bipin Sangankar.