By Manoj Kumar Borthakur
Like the Brahmins of yore, all Vaishnabites of numerous Satras in Assam are teachers whose primary vocation is to teach. By that parameter, Sarat Mahanta, born and brought up in Bareghar Satra near Mezenga in Sivasagar district, was a teacher to the core. There was a time in our country, when universities were few, schools and colleges began springing up in every small town and localities, the only dream shared by almost every youth from the middle class families was to become a teacher after graduation and a professor after post-graduation. Sarat Mahanta was no different. He became a teacher in Nazira Higher Secondary School first and after three years in 1964, became a lecturer in History in the renowned Sibsagar College, the nerve centre of intellectual and educational sphere of not just the temple township but also of the whole undivided Sivasagar district.
Most of teachers now a days prefer to be content with his assignments and duties within the class room, but Sarat Mahanta Sir, as far as I have come to know, was actively associated with the extraordinarily dynamic Principal of the time Parag Chaliha in building the enviable academic ambience of the college. He was a good teacher too and was always ready to provide everyone with facts and figures of history whenever someone of the teaching staff or a student needed. Sarat Mahanta’s pivotal role as a responsible teacher in the institution for over three decades and a mediator between two warring factions of the teaching staff centering around the then Principal, will long be remembered by the posterity.
Sarat Mahanta Sir was very active on the social front as well. He was the correspondent of the reputed daily, The Assam Tribune, from Sivasagar from 1991 to 2003 when I was a correspondent of the same paper from Demow. It was this common avocation that drew us closer to one another. When I shifted to Sivasagar town in 1997, I grew closer to Mahanta Sir. He often advised me to delve deeper into serious world of writing leaving aside the purely temporal and ephemeral report writing for newspapers. Mahanta Sir was perhaps right as I often feel so after more than a quarter of a century of being a scribe from small towns. We had differences also when the then Sivasagar Deputy Commissioner allegedly thrashed a reporter in his office on a certain day in the nineties and the journalist fraternity was divided over the issue. But Mahanta Sir continued to give us guidance and good suggestions because he was after all a teacher and above petty differences.
Prasanta J Baruah, Executive Editor, The Assam Tribune, in a letter to him on his retirement profusely appreciated his sincerity and honesty as a reporter and acknowledged his long services to the people of Assam in different capacities.
Mahanta Sir began another successful innings after his retirement as an honourable member of the State Human Rights Commission, Assam in 2003. Shailendunath Phukan, former Justice, Supreme Court of India and former Chairman, State Human Rights Commission, in a tributary write-up recalls Sarat Mahanta Sir’s erudition and sincere deliverance of service to the people as a member of the Commission.
Mahanta Sir was an earthly man rooted to the soil and the culture of the land. He taught his children also not to ape the west blindly and also showed the way towards light and that made all the three children learn how to unlearn as time passes by. All three of them are now rendering services to the nation responsibly in their own fields. That is the way of the world.
With these words we, once more, remember Sarat Mahanta Sir, a teacher to the core.
(On the occasion of his death anniversary)