Founded in 1917, Asam Sahitya Sabha is the highest non-governmental Assamese linguistic and cultural body. The historically rich and valued Assamese literature was once cherished by many but now it’s losing its significance and charm. As the world is evolving, people tend to leave behind their tradition, language and culture. Asam Sahitya Sabha is a 103-year-old literature community that is trying to put together Assamese literature and bring it forth.
Currently, Asam Sahita Sabha is planning a mammoth project of digitizing the literature and making it available for hundreds of users at a single platform.
With digitization, a huge variety of material will be available in a single place: an online archive accessible to the public. “And they can be in any part of the world,” said Kuladhar Saikia, president, Asam Sahitya Sabha. Many members of the Assamese diaspora particularly welcome this decision since all these years, they have had limited access to such material.
Among the texts that will be digitised includes the first Assamese language magazine/journal, Orunodoi, published in 1846, content from saanchipaats or 13th century manuscripts made of tree bark, old dictionaries as well as other valuable books and writings.
The literature body will be collaborating with institutions like IIT-Guwahati, Tezpur University, Cotton University to build the digital archive.
The process of digitisation has been initiated as the Sabha now has an IT Cell which is assisting with the digitising initiative, with state-government owned Assam Electronics Development Corporation Ltd. (AMTRON) providing technical support. This digitization process is going to carry out with the latest social technology.
2,000 units of Sabha will be on the ground to catalyse the digitisation process. Their task will be searching for books and documents from different sources.
The Sabha has also been actively involved in Webinars, Online Poetry reading, and storytelling session in collaboration with All India Radio’s (AIR) Guwahati division for a children’s storytelling programme that drew a wide range of listeners.
Initiatives like these are much needed as they bring seekers of literature closer to their goal. They are a major step towards Digital India. Seeing how a century-old literature body is making efforts towards making its literature more accessible makes us realize the value of heritage language and how valuable it is for one’s identity.
