HT Correspondent
SIVASAGAR, Jan 9: The INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art & Cultural Heritage), New Delhi in a documentation project on Ahom Architecture(heritageawards.intach.in .org. /18/panels/The Architecture of the Ahoms, Sivasagar, Assam_1) made a glaring mistake by citing that the garbha-griha of the famous Ahom era temple Siva Doul in Sivasagar had been built in accordance to the Islamic tradition.
Factually incorrect statements evoked protests from several Ahom organisations, Tai Pundits, and researchers.
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ATASU central Committee (Basanta Gogoi faction) cautioned the Central institution not to distort Assam’s history and culture nationally and internationally.
He said that it is done childishly without doing any research on Ahom Architecture.
In a protest letter to the chairman and the Governing Council, former INTACH convener and a life member Jayanta Sarma, Guwahati, said that the Mughals since Bakhtier Khilji’s time (1615 )failed to occupy Assam despite invading the province for 14 times and Assam was never a part of India till the Treaty of Yandaboo 1826.
Hence there could be no synergy in culture and architecture with an enemy culture invading armies.
Further, Sarma added that there is no marble floor in the garbha-griha of the Siva temple as mentioned in the INTACH article.
The marble floor, laid decades ago by the Doul Committee, has been removed by the ASI.
Noted Tai Ahom scholar Dr Pushpa Gogoi said that there is no admixture of Ahom and Islamic architectural style anywhere in Assam, rather it is 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 creepers, flowers, animals, leaves, and Hindu gods and goddesses.
Prabin Sarma, assistant professor of History, at Sibsagar College, also criticised incorrect projection of architectural remains of the Ahom Dynasty that ruled the state for six hundred years.
Speaking to the correspondent, he said that the temples (Douls) built by the Ahoms are of Nagara style with five ridges (strips) on the outer surface walls of the domes while Sivadoul has five.
Swargadeo Siva Singha’s queen consort Modambika had the Doul built between 1733-1734 alongside excavating the Sivasagar Borpukhuri, somewhere between 1731 to 1738 AD.
The height of the temple is 110 ft while its perimeter is 195 ft at the base with a 8 ft gold dome at the top.
However, the 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.”
