Mail News Service
Imphal, Mar 1 : When the dream turns into a reality one gets ecstatic pleasure. But the pleasure of this kind occurs rarely. It happened, on February 25 at Rup Mahal Theatre on the concluding day of Nimita Devi Nritya Ashram Sagolband Vijaygobinda’s festival of tribal marriages and their accompanying dance and music of Manipur, the spectators were enthralled by the show on the stage.
The programme organised under the aegis of Ministry of Culture Government of India CFG Department and presented on stage was appreciable. The main speaker of the function, who was director of the project, Hidangmayum Achouba Sharma said, the aim and object of the project are to preserve the dying traditional culture of the tribal and also to nurture emotional integrity of all the indigenous people of the state by reviving cultures of the people. He mentioned about the problems faced in establishing contact with tribal elders, who know too much about tribal culture, living in remote and far off places of the state.
Chief guest of the function Secretary Manipur State kala Akademi S. Vedeshwor Sharma was of the view that more such project that depicts tribal marriage and accompanying music needs to be preserved in digital format for viewing by future generation. Such research project will incur huge expenditure if it is done by Government. Therefore kudos goes to Nimita Devi Nritya Ashram for conducting the research with least expenditure. This shows where there is a will there is way. He also said, as Manipur Government is going to have a separate language directorate all these cultural traditions of tribal should be preserved in written form of all tribal major dialects.
In his presidential speech Padmashree S. Thanil expressed unhappiness that a new cultural trend sweeping across the world has buffeted traditional culture of the minority community. A good attempt is made by the ashram to preserve in digital format the cultural traditions of the tribal communities, he said.
The crowd fixed their eyes on the stage when the tribal presented dances and songs sung during the marriage ceremony. It gave a new taste to the spectators when the artistes presented their sequences one after another. The tribal dances presented were different from what we are seeing these days.
Secretary of the ashram, who also spoke on the occasion said unless there is help from the Government no such research can be conducted. But if we stop conducting research a time will come when we will not be able to trace the originality of many communities. Hence the importance of protecting cultural identity of all communities, he added.
Read more / Original news source: http://manipur-mail.com/festival-of-tribal-marriages/
