Oral Literature festival, first of its kind celebrated in Manipur

James Khangenbam *

Oral Literature festival

A resourceful and thought-provoking festival of literature commemorating the birth centenary of Maharaj Kumari Binodini throws open a larger perspective of literary works. Beyond literature, the four-day festival also highlighted the importance of preserving wisdoms and knowledge of any community by preserving the language they speak.

Often encrypted in a fading language, a sensibility or a wisdom gets disappeared when a language dies. Be it a healing, ecological wisdom or any knowledge, the sensibility of every community living in the world might differ but the diversity is a wonder. The Listener's Festival of Orality brings hope and understanding with international and institutional participation who are working on ground to preserve and protect languages across the globe.

Literature is a strong medium of human expression that captures the time in words. Perhaps opening up the horizon of literature draws greater interest and the festival of oral literature was one such event. It was a literature festival without books, where song lyrics are traced to their inspiration and source.

The significance of Khongjom Parva a traditional 1891 ballad that narrates the Anglo Manipuri war in Manipur comes out distinctly in the festival. Khongjom Parva is a very popular ballad in Manipur for its unique historical story telling celebrating the valour of the Manipuri soldiers who put up a fight with the British soldiers at Khongjom.

A language which has less than ten thousand speaker is considered endangered recalled Hezekiel Dlamini, UNESCO New Delhi. Creating Digital Resources for the promotion of indigenous languages was one panel hosted by Central Institute for Indian Languages.

The other panel hosted by the same institute is on developing collaborative scholarship on language and culture. Gilvian Muller de Oliveira, UNESCO Chair on language Policies for multilingualism, Professor Shobhana Chelliah, Indiana University, Aleena Brahma from CIIL, Sentila Yanger a Padmashree awardee, A Peterson, Associate Professor of Lingusitics, Dartmouth College, Mary Burke from University of North Texas, Denton attended the festival as resource person.

L Somi Roy, director of the festival remark that, "Globalisation attracts cargoes of homogenisation and sensibilities of uncountable communities are overshadowed in the process. A culture can begin to understand itself only by comparison and juxtaposition with other cultures. We need collaborative study with the outside or else North East culture will be repeatedly discussed internally; we would be studying only what we already know. But if we compare our manuscripts to Hindu manuscripts or Egyptian manuscripts, we will better know what manuscripts traditions are about. Knowledge has to be collaborative especially for small cultures like ours in Northeast India".

Parallel session on performance-based discussion were also held at the Chorus Repertory Theatre, Imphal. Guru Rewben Mashanga, Tiameren Aier, Guru Sangyusang Pongener, Sentila Yanger, Takhellambam Shyamkanhai, Dushyant Dwivedi and group, thangi Chhangte, Teimeren Aier and sisters six from Manipur, Nagaland and Mizoram performed during the festival.

Ratan Thiyam an eminent internationally acclaim theatre director and trustee of IMASI – Maharaj Kumari Binodini Memorial Trust was the chairman of the festival. 'The Pena balladeers are the keepers of old Manipuri language unveils Oja Mangangsana in a post-performance discussion.

He further conveyed that a Pena player has to learn the traditional and cultural Pena performances which are often sung in old Manipuri language. They are also regarded as the keeper of old Manipuri language. For the Pena performer to thrive in modernity, they have to again innovate and compose their own Pena music suitable to the contemporary society.

Somi Roy and his team worked for four years to celebrate the birth Centenary of MK Binodini. Somi Roy happens to be the son of Late MK Binodini who left a legacy of literary works. Somi Roy has been translating her books into English and one of her books, The Princess and Political Agent is published by Penguin in the Modern Classic book category recently.

MK Binodini, a Padmashree awardee in Literature remains as an inspirational figure to the writers of the State. Her stories when made into films by her collaborator and film director Aribam Syam Sharma had won international accolades including official entry at 44th Cannes, winning Gran Prix at the Festival of Three Continents Nantes (1982).