Sipajhar: In a joint effort, Sipajhar College and the Nanda Talukdar Foundation (NTF) have begun a major initiative to protect Assam's rich literary and cultural heritage by signing an MoU on digital preservation of rare, fragile, and out-of-print works originating from the region.
This collaborative effort cascades under NTF's prominent program ‘Digitising Assam,’ through which more than 2.5 million pages of Assamese literature have already been archived.
The MoU focuses on the identification and digitisation of invaluable manuscripts, books, and journals created by regional writers so that these resources remain accessible to students, scholars, and the general public. Once digitised, the materials will be integrated into one of Assam's largest emerging digital repositories of literary and cultural heritage.
One of the important features of the initiative is the focus it places on the Darangi Kala-Kristi, the unique cultural, artistic, and literary tradition of the Darrang region. Most of the surviving works that documented this tradition continue to remain scattered, fragile, or even at risk of being irretrievably lost. These texts will now be systematically preserved and digitised under the partnership.
Principal of Sipajhar College, Dr Satyendra Kumar Sharma, while speaking at the ceremony, stated the Agreement as ‘a historic step towards preserving the literary wealth of Sipajhar and its surrounding areas.’
Librarian Dr Nirmali Chakravorty, who inaugurated the event along with other speakers, mentioned the importance of bringing local collections into the broader Digitising Assam movement to make more of Assamese literature accessible to the rest of the world
The Sipajhar College–NTF collaboration, therefore, represents a blend of the local literature and heritage with modern digital platforms, an exemplary model that institutions across Assam can work toward to preserve and promote the rich literary traditions of the state.