Nanda Taludar Foundation Initiative
Come December 1, the 175-year-old Orunodoi magazine will be put under exhibition for the first time in the history of Assam in the majestic Mahabahu Brahamputra Heritage centre by the Nanda Talukdar Foundation.
"The exhibition shall be there for three months starting from December 1, 2021, to Feb 28, 2022, and I wish every Assamese see this historic piece and pride of Assamese heritage," said Nanda Talukdar Foundation Secretary Mrinal Talukdar.
The Nanda Talukdar Foundation and GMDA have jointly have organized this exhibition, which happens to be the first display of Orunodoi anywhere in the world.
Besides these only surviving copies in Assam, a few are being preserved in British Museum London, Oxford University Library, Oxford Cambridge University Library and National Library, Kolkatta. "This is for the first time, people of Assam will be able to see the physical copy of Orunodoi", said Mr Talukdar.
The Christian Missionaries published the magazine in 1846 and continued till 1882, heralding the golden age for the Assamese language. The missionaries brought the printing press all the way from the United States along with Assamese fonts and got no support from the English administration.
Oliver T Cutter was the editor for the first five years and then Dr Nathan Brown took charge as the editor. First-year subscription was 577 of which 249 are natives. Later it rose to 800 but got closed down by 1882.
The ceremonial inauguration of the exhibition shall be done by Asomiya Praidin Editor Jayanta Barua.
Nanda Talukdar Foundation
From a modest beginning with making public, the personal library of renowned litterateur Late Nanda Talukdar in 1996, the Nanda Talukdar Foundation(NTF) has come a long way in the past 25 years to emerge as a name to reckon with in Assam, especially in the sphere of Publication, Contemporary Social History Research, Social Audit, Media Advocacy and Ground-level intervention.
Today the Nanda Talukdar Foundation has emerged a focal point of pioneering contemporary social history, advocacy, as well as intervention and their area of activities, is spread both horizontally and vertically first in Assam and then slowly in other parts of the North-East India.
For the Assamese literature, the library of the Nanda Talukdar Foundation is considered as one of the final frontiers. No research on Assamese literature in the past five decades have been completed without the Foundation's help.
The Foundation is the treasure house of the Assamese literature of the early nineteenth century to the twentieth century, where scientifically the documents, journals and books are preserved through digitalization as well as the conventional method.
