'Picnic' with a mission in tribal meet

Guwahati, Dec 27 (UNI) It was a picnic with a mission at the Barsapara cricket stadium in the city today.

A 'shared meal' was organized today on the penultimate day of the five-day long festival of the Janajatia Sartha aur Adhikar Suraksha Manch to foster camaraderie among tribal people of the region.

The festival saw the coming together of 120 tribes from various parts of North East, including Sikkim, with a few delegates from Nepal also attending it.

As part of today's 'Matri haste bhojan', one member of 1,000 families, both tribal and non-tribal, in and around the city brought home-made food for the 4,000 delegates of the festival.

Each family was assigned to provide food for at least four delegates. Accordingly, the delegates and the families shared the meal at the venue where the former have been camping.

The organizers said the main aim of this shared meal event was to bind the tribes of the hills and the plains together as sharing meal was a healthy means of bringing them closer.

They informed that a documentary on the festival would be produced and sent to tribal organizations in other parts of the country to urge them to come together on a common platform.

The organizers maintained that the tribals needed to be brought together to remind them of their age-old identities so that they could bear the 'onslaught' of other cultures without faltering.

UNI SG KK DB1725