NINGRULA HARMONY GROUND, Ledo, Feb 4 � Inaugurating the second open session of the 7th Special Annual Session of Asam Sahitya Sabha on the Ningrula Harmony Ground at Ledo today afternoon, former Justice of Supreme Court, Dr. Mukundakam Sarma reiterated that Asam Sahitya Sabha had been devoting itself to the twin goals of achievement of perfection and development of Assamese language on the one hand and the development of all the other languages of the tribes and communities living within the State on the other. In this context, he appealed to all the communities of the State to come together and be reciprocal to one another in the task of building up a greater nationality of Assam. He regretted that it took a long time for the voice of the North East to reach Delhi, and if there was dissension among them, they could never hope for timely fulfilment of their needs.
Referring to the fabulous lore of medieval Assamese literature, Dr. Sarma felt that there was adequate ground for bringing out a comprehensive history of Assamese literature. Similarly, time had come when the history of our society, culture and politics had to be reinterpreted and by making use of all the available materials a complete, research based history be published, Dr. Sarma added. He expressed his anxiety at the alleged rotting of many precious books for lack of proper maintenance in the National Library in Kolkata and urged upon the Assam Government, Asam Sahitya Sabha and the literary circles to take the initiative towards proper preservation of them.
The general secretary of the Sabha, Dr Pramananda Rajbonshi read out a letter from Tarun Gogoi, the Chief Minister of Assam, addressed to the president of the Sabha, Rong Bong Terang. In his letter, Gogoi regretted his inability to attend the Sabha due to inadvertent reasons. Appreciating the efforts of the Asam Sahitya Sabha, Gogoi stated that it had been contributing a lot to the development of the community life of the State.
Pradyut Bordoloi, president of the reception committee, welcomed the gathering. He traced in his speech the enchanting history of the locality from 1500 BC when the first hordes of the migrants from the South East Asia landed here up to the time of our own. He dwelt at length upon the demographic variety of the entire locality, and said that Ledo represented the ideal pattern of harmonious life of peace, amity and understanding. He pleaded for expansion of the Assamese vocabulary through inclusion of the useful words and terms of speech of the languages spoken by the various ethnic tribes living within the State so as to forge a sealing bond of togetherness.
Participating in the session as a distinguished guest, Pawan Singh Ghatowar, Union Minister of DoNER, said that the Ledo Session would remain glorious in the annals of Asam Sahitya Sabha because of the convergence of all the ethnic tribes in the organization of it. While enumerating the diverse wealth of folk music and dances among the various tribes and communities, Ghatowar described Assam as a State of magnificent folk culture. He drew the attention of the Sabha to the difficulties faced by the Tea community children in getting proper quality of education and urged upon the Sabha to address this problem urgently.
Another distinguished guest, Dr. Gopal Moni Das from Tripura in his speech expressed his sense of wonder to see the vastness of the popular responses to this literary event-so varied in articulation and so varied in content. He traced the bonds of friendship between Assam and Tripura to the days of Rudra Singha 300 years ago, and asserted: �Assam is my home, Guwahati my trade centre, Brahmaputra my heart�. Referring to the Assamese National Song, he said: �The voices and rhythms of the entire North East are merged together in O mor aponar desh�.
In his presidential speech, Rong Bong Terang declared that Assamese, having been formed with the elements from all the ethnic languages of Assam, is the people�s language and regretted that it was not yet used as the official language of the State. He hoped that the Official Language Act would be properly implemented after the Ledo Session.
