SHILLONG, Dec 30: The North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU) on Friday paid tribute to freedom fighter U Kiang Nangbah on his 160th death anniversary.
According to a statement, a programme was also organised by the NSS Cell of NEHU to mark the day.
The programme began with the singing of the National Anthem and laying of the wreath on the portrait of U Kiang Nangbah.
During the programme, Prof. Shobhan N Lamare of Department of History presented a talk on the lives and struggle of U Kiang Nangbah in resisting the British Raj.
He stated that a lot is not known about the life of U Kiang Nangbah because the amount of work done lacks information.
“Kiang Nangbah understood very early on that the might of the British Empire was not fully comprehended by the people of his community during those initial years of the freedom struggle, mainly because of their ignorance of the affairs of the world at large. Nangbah rightly felt that the foreigners had no right to disrupt their ways of living, and prevent them from performing their cultural and religious obligations as had been practised so far. He, therefore, chose to revolt against the British occupiers who had very little or almost no regard for the religion, customs and traditions of the Jaintias and their way of life,” Prof Lamare said.
NEHU Vice Chancellor Prof. Prabha Shankar Shukla, on the other hand, said, “The ignorance about U Kiang Nangbah is a reflection on the government’s education policy, which has totally neglected the history of the Northeast. But now, with the introduction of the New Education Policy, the youth of the nation will actually get to see and learn about these freedom fighters. Nevertheless, this sensitisation has to begin from the school level itself, and that can be made possible only by incorporating the history, culture and traditions of the Northeast in social studies textbooks taught across the country.”
“It is the work of historians like Prof. Shobhan Lamare that we hope will contribute to re-write the history books so that the young generations of our state and nation will know more about these freedom fighters who gave away the beds of feathers and sacrificed their lives for us. We should all be thankful to Prof. Lamare for his work and hope that many more historians come up with their work on the freedom fighters of the state of Meghalaya,” he added.