GUWAHATI
A six-member team from Arunachal Pradesh has reached London to research, collect archival material and documents on the State’s “unsung heroes”, from various institutes in the United Kingdom.
The team comprises professors and a research scholar from the State’s Rajiv Gandhi University and a government official.
“The visit is a part of the ongoing research and documentation works on unsung heroes of Arunachal Pradesh, under the chairmanship of Deputy Chief Minister Chowna Mein,” team member and government official Ajay Saring said on Saturday.
“We are here because most of the records on the history of Arunachal Pradesh from the (erstwhile North Eastern Frontier Tracts) period ranging from 1792 to 1945 are available in the form of proceedings, tour diaries, reports, survey notes, personal diaries, official correspondences, images, toponym and ethnographical data, at different establishments and institutions in the United Kingdom,” he said.
The project has been dovetailed with the Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav (to commemorate 75 years of Independence) and efforts of the State government to reconstruct the history of Arunachal Pradesh.
According to the research team, the critical archival documents, including on the resistance and freedom struggle by the tribal people against the colonial rules, were recorded only by the colonial administrators and officials. These would be vital for reconstructing the State’s history and culture, and for getting credible ethnographical information on its different indigenous communities, it said.
During their 18-day tour of the United Kingdom, the team members will visit institutions such as London’s British Library: Asian and African Studies, The National Archives, Royal Geographical Society, National Army Museum Templer Study Centre, the School of Oriental and African Studies and the University of Oxford for their research and documentation work.
Apart from Mr. Saring, the team members are professors Sarit Kumar Chaudhuri, Shyam Narayan Singh, Tana Showren and Ashan Riddi and research scholar Nepha Wangsa – all from Rajiv Gandhi University.
