Assam Sahitya Sabha or Assam Literary Society
- It is a non Government, non profit, literary organisation of Assam.
- It was founded in December, 1917 to promote the culture of Assam and Assamese literature.
- It has about one thousand branches all over Assam and also outside the state.
- It’s central office is at Jorhat
Genesis
- The history of modern Assam, modern Assamese language and literature and culture found their starting points in the early part of the 19th century.
- Since 1872 some efforts were made to build up some organisations for the development of modern Assamese language, literature and culture.
- Padmanath Gohain Baruah had established Kohima Sahitya Sabha at Kohima, Nagaland, in the month of December, 1895. Padmanath Gohain Baruah was founder Secretary and Nabin Chandra Bhattacherjee was the founder President.
- Assam Sahitya Sabha, which came into being in 1917, was the final results of all those efforts.
- The first conference was held in the month of 26 December 1917 and Padmanath Gohain Baruah was it’s first President. Sarat Chandra Goswami was the first secretary.
- At that time it was held under the banner of Sodou Axom Sahitya Sanmilani. On 5th May of 1924, it was registered as ‘Axom Sahitya Sabha’ and the earlier name was formally changed in 1944.
Main functions
- Work for all round development of the Assamese language, literature and the culture of Assamese.
- Publications of Dictionary, Research works, monographs on languages, literature, culture, tribes and races etc.
- To enquire, discover, collect and research on ancient Assamese literature.
- To promote music, art and sculpture of the State.
- To promote and publicize the Assamese language and literature.
Sahitya Sabha festivals
- The conference of the Asam Sahitya Sabha helds biennially. The writers of the state assemble, exchange their views and address the people.
- First conference of Asam Sahitya Sabha was held at Sivasagar, Assam.
- The last conference was held in Padmanath Gohain Baruah Khetra, Sivasagar from 8 February to 12 February 2017.
- The official journal of the Asam Sahitya Sabha, Asam Sahitya Sabha Patrika was first published in 1927.
Presidents
- Padmanath Gohain Baruah was the first president of Asam Sahitya Sabha during the inaugural conference at Sibsagar in 1917.
- Chandradhar Barua Goalpara was president 1918, Kaliram Medhi in 1919, Hemchandra Goswami in 1920 and Amrit Bhushan Dev Adhikari in 1923.
Unicode for Assamese language
- A team, included the current Sahitya Sabha president Dr Paramananda Rajbongshi, met with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) working group II to sound out a long-standing demand for an independent digital identity to the Assamese script.
- Unicode Standard was accepted by the Government of India in 2000, the Unicode Consortium did “not encode the Assamese script, instead added two characters of the Assamese script to the Bengali script, depicting them as a Bengali characters.”
- According to the Asam Sahitya Sabha factsheet, the early 5th century inscription of the Nagajari-Khanikar village in Assam’s Golaghat district is the
oldest Assamese inscription.