The Asam Sahitya Sabha, an influential literary body since 1917 once regarded as the custodian of Assamese literature, is again in news for all the wrong reasons. This time, the organization is grabbing headlines for serving pork meat in its executive meeting held in upper Assam’s Sivasagar district on Sunday. The meeting was convened by Asam Sahitya Sabha president, Dr Kukadhar Saikia who has been serving for a second term since his superannuation from the position of DGP in Assam. A retired IPS officer, Dr Saikia has written many acclaimed books and has won the prestigious Sahitya Academy award.
The organising committee served pork meat during lunch along with other local delicacies. The inclusion of pork meat in the menu raised many eyebrows as many people in the state do not consume the meat at least in public for religious and customary reasons.
Speaking to News18 on Monday, president Dr Saikia slammed the negative press surrounding the event and said the media should have published what had been discussed in the meeting. He pointed out the controversy as baseless given the vibrancy of the state in food habits and other ways of life. Lamenting the media for making it an issue, Dr Saikia said the sabha took some pertinent decisions towards incorporating the Assamese language in court work.
A decision had also been taken to digitize Assamese literary works, incorporating the Assamese language in the Unicode consortium and pressing for correct auto-translation in web platforms through better aggregation in Artificial Intelligence (AI). However, he appealed for more and more participation from the larger audience to establish the language on web platforms.
Meanwhile, an eminent poet from Assam, Dr Kamal Kumar Tanti said the attitude of disgrace for serving pork meat had reflected the misplaced caste hegemony of Hindu Assamese society as pork has been an integral delicacy of the tribal population of the state.
However, Dr Chandan Goswami of Guwahati University blamed such an attitude for the dissociation of tribal society from the larger Assamese society. He, however, agreed with the fact that it would have been better had the pork meat been served separately embracing the food habits of non-eaters.
Writer Bipasha Bora advised revamping the 105-year-old-body incorporating more voices from the younger generation and women.
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