Sivasagar, Jan 10:  The INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art & Cultural Heritage), New Delhi, in a documentation project on Ahom architecture, made a glaring mistake by citing that the garbhagriha of the famous Ahom era temple Siva Doul in Sivasagar had been built in accordance to the Islamic tradition. The factually incorrect statements evoked protests from several Ahom organisations, Tai Pundits, and researchers.

The ATASU central committee (Basanta Gogoi faction) cautioned the central institution not to distort Assam's history and culture nationally and internationally. He claimed that the project was done without doing any research on Ahom architecture.

In a protest letter to the chairman and the governing council of INTACH, former INTACH convener and life member Jayanta Sarma said that since Bakhtiyar Khilji's time, outside powers failed to occupy Assam despite invading the province 14 times, and Assam was never a part of India till the Treaty of Yandaboo in 1826. Hence, there could be no synergy in culture and architecture with the enemy culture of the invading armies.

Further, Sarma added that there is no marble floor in the garbhagriha of the Siva Doul as mentioned in the INTACH article. The marble floor, laid decades ago by the Doul Committee, was removed by the ASI.

Noted Tai Ahom scholar Dr. Pushpa Gogoi said that there was no admixture of Ahom and Islamic architectural style anywhere in Assam; rather, it was a blend of indigenous Tai Ahom, Hindu, and Buddhist architecture. The temples were made with locally available materials such as hardened earth, wood, stone, and brick and decorated with murals of creepers, flowers, animals, leaves, and Hindu gods and goddesses.

Prabin Sarma, assistant professor of History at Sibsagar College, also criticised such incorrect projection of architectural remains of the Ahom dynasty that ruled the state for 600 years. He told this correspondent that the temples (Douls) built by the Ahoms are of Nagara style with five ridges (strips) on the outer surface walls of the domes, including the Siva Ddoul.

Meanwhile, the INTACH Director of Chapters Division, Capt. Arbind Sukla (Retd.), in a release, recently clarified that the documentation project titled 'The Architecture of the Ahoms, Sivasagar, Assam' was part of an online documentation archive submitted by the undergraduate students of the School of Environment and Architecture, Mumbai, in 2015. These projects, he said, "...reflect individual findings and views of the authors and do not reflect the views and positions of the INTACH."

By-

Correspondent