Seminar on Shamanism held at Rajiv Gandhi University

 OUR CORRESPONDENT

ITANAGAR: A two-day national seminar on ‘Shamanistic Practices and Narratives Among the Tribes of Arunachal Pradesh’ began at Rajiv Gandhi University (RGU) near here, on Monday.

The seminar is being organized by the RGUs Arunachal Institute of Tribal Studies (AITS), in collaboration with the Research Institute of World’s Ancient Traditions, Cultures and Heritage (RIWATCH) and North Eastern Council (NEC), Shillong.

In his inaugural address, Department of Indigenous Affairs director Sokhep Kri expressed deep concern about the challenges faced by shamans throughout their life across the state. He informed that the state government, particularly the Department of Indigenous Affairs, is trying their best to safeguard the practice of shamanism and its related institutions.

Kri informed about the establishment of the ‘Gurukuls’ in some areas of Arunachal which aims to teach shamanistic chants, arts, crafts and indigenous language. Prof Ram Prasad Mitra from Anthropology department in University of Delhi, in his keynote address, positively articulated his perception of the shamans and its practices. He emphasized how in contemporary times; people must start to revisit and reconstitute indigenous knowledge through documentation.

Prof Mitra added that language, ritual, symbols and musical instruments have been the core pathways attached to shamans and their way of practicing shamanism. He said that psychological and cognitive factors played an important mechanism in understanding shamanistic practices.

RITWATCH executive director Vijay Swami, while sharing his years of experience in documenting cultures, stated that the importance of the shaman in any society cannot be ignored. Shamans act as counsellor, healer, mediator of human and spiritual world and above all the keeper of the vast indigenous knowledge system, he added.

RGUs Faculty of Social Sciences dean Prof Sarit K Chaudhuri stated that ‘the death of shamans is the death of human intellectual knowledge’. RGUs AITS director Prof Simon John emphasized how in the context of academics, researchers often face challenges and have to overcome through the documentation process of shamanistic practices and the associated chanting of Arunachal Pradesh. He also highlighted the work executed by the AITS with regards to documentation and preservation of cultures and traditions of various communities of Arunachal Pradesh.

Also Read:   Rajiv Gandhi University, Vivekananda Kendra ink MoU to promote Japanese language

Also Watch: