Saturday, February 12, 2011

Sahityarathi’s Orissa house to be a museum

GUWAHATI, Feb 11 – The State Government will convert the Sambalpur (Orissa) residence of Sahityarathi Lakshminath Bezbaruah into a museum. An amount of Rs 1 crore has already been sanctioned for the purpose.

Revealing this, Minister for Cultural Affairs Bharat Chandra Narah today told newsmen that the Sambalpur residence, where the doyen of Assamese literature spent a major part of his life, had a special place in the hearts of the people of Assam and the State Government would ensure that Bezbaruah’s legacy was preserved for posterity.

Narah also announced the names of the recipients of the Dr Bhabendra Nath Saikia Award-2009 (actor Biju Phukan), Bir Chilarai Award-2008 (educationist Ambika Charan Choudhury), Ganesh Gogoi Award-2010 (poet Ajit Baruah), and the Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed Award for 2008 and 2009 (journalist MJ Akbar and Gandhian Hem Bharali respectively). The awards will formally be presented this year.

Giving an account of the different awards instituted by the State Government in the field of art and culture, Narah said the Congress government was more ‘nationalistic’ in that it cared for regional sentiments more than the AGP.

“The Congress has been pursuing a nationalist agenda — so much so that the regional forces of the State have been rendered irrelevant. The AGP, which swears by the State’s nationalist stalwarts since Bir Chilarai and Lachit Barphukan, did absolutely nothing to honour their memory. In contrast, the Congress government has taken up a number of projects for this,” Narah said, adding that before the Congress assumed charge in 2001 there were just five awards but now in has increased to 18.

Giving an account of the steps taken by the Government to promote art and culture, the minister said that a number of cultural complexes (kalakshetras) would come up across the State, such as Chilarai Kalakshetra at Bongaigaon, Madhavdev Kalakshetra at Bongaigaon, Aniruddha Kalakshetra at Tinsukia, Sati Sadhani Kalakshetra at Golaghat, Sati Radhika Kalakshetra at Batadrawa, Sarat Sinha Kalakshetra at Chapar, etc.

Narah said that the Government had started a policy of financing films made under public-private project (PPP) under which films on cultural themes would receive heavy subsidy. “In addition, we have constituted a corpus fund of Rs 1 crore for helping poor folk artistes,” he added.

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