GUWAHATI: Injot Trust's 'Sanghe Urab', the five-day residential mentorship programme for the Adivasi youth of Assam, concluded in the city on Sunday with a cultural show organized by the participants amidst laughter, dance, music and felicitations.
"Darkness cannot eliminate darkness. Only Injot (illumination) can. Thanks to Injot Trust, we are learning to fly together through Sanghe Urab," said participant James Maximillianer Swansi.
Sanghe Urab was a unique mentorship programme - a first-of-its-kind in Assam for Adivasi youth of the region conceptualized and organized by Guwahati based non-profit Injot Trust. The programme was a hybrid of online and offline sessions during which mentors from diverse fields introduce the participants to various aspects of self, community, profession and social justice, over a period of three to four months. The principal sponsor of the residential programme was State Bank of India, which had also supported the programme in 2021. The co-sponsor of the residential programme was Oil India Limited.
A crucial segment of the Sanghe Urab programme was focused on the Adivasi identity - the ancestral wisdom, the culture, the heritage, the stories, rituals and sustainable practices deeply rooted in human's co-existence in nature as an integral member of the ecosystem (and not as a controller of the system). Injot's founder director Anjali Tirkey introduced the participants to the diverse mural arts, tattoo art and stories.
"In Assam, there is a tendency to paint every Adivasi with the same brush stroke - it eliminates the diversity that exists in the Adivasi society. Even our youth in Assam have been through the same education system, historic oppression and systemic obliteration of heterogeneity. I was not surprised to see that many of our participants did not know about the richness and diversity, and I do not blame them. For generations they have been made to feel like lesser inhabitants of this State. But I think it is time for reclamation of the Adivasi identity and feeling self-assured about it," said Tirkey.
Tirkey also shared about the importance of preserving Adivasi languages and introduced the participants to various Adivasi movements from Koel Karo to Netarhat to Niyamgiri and to people whose contribution often remain unrecognized by the mainstream. Through an assignment, she instructed participants to investigate and research about other Adivasi heroes and 'sheroes', and also give presentations on Adivasi people from their own villages and towns, whom they considered to be heroes and 'sheroes' irrespective of whether they are famous. A good chunk of an evening during the residential session was spent in listening to the stories collected by the participants. Asranti Bhengra - a participant - said, "When the assignment was given, I did not really understand the value of the exercise. But now that I am listening to the multitude of stories from all my peers, I am not just filled with pride, but I am also getting the yearning to do more in-depth research. If not us, who else will narrate these stories?"
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