A Clarion Call from Poet Joya Mitra - WE STAND BY HER

This is a small school with a big difference. Not exactly a school, its neither a formal daycare centre. The children themselves have named it Maj-orha - The Funhouse.

The area is Rampurhat in Birbhum dist. Large Part of the place is full of stone quarries. Many of the tribal families here go for their livelihood to these stone quarries and crushers. The elder children can’t continue their studies, as they have to look after the younger ones. For the whole day these kids are left to take care of themselves.

3years ago a group of activists both tribal and non-tribal, in their wildest dreams of love planned a shelter for the children at a village called Garia. So the ‘Funhouse’ came into being, starting at first with 4 later 15 children under a Mahua tree. Some volunteers accompanying and teaching them. They also kept talking to the mothers. Now there are nearly 50 students aged from 3-12 years from three villages. Maj-orha is now housed in a two-storied brick-and-mud building with thatched roof. The kids stay there from 7 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon. They receive breakfast lunch and afternoon snacks here. They also get the basic educative skills and some more trainings that will come to their help in future life.                                                       

6 trained local young men and women keep them company the whole day. In these three years almost 60 children of the 3 villages have learnt basic three R’s quite well. After just two years in Maj-orha they are able to write their daily experiences in Bengali and Santhali.

They draw with unusual skill and imagination. They sing and dance their culture. Learn the history and geography of their own villages and can speak with their heads held high looking straight into the listeners’ eyes. These students are our promising, wonderful young friends.

Some working youth and students in and outside the country used to pull a fund for giving ‘Fun House’ the care of financial support. But with the spiraling rise of daily goods and the global recession our source of sustenance is drying up. The question is troubling our mind how can we run the centre and continue to feed these our children properly. We know there are so many underfed or hungry kids but we are now thinking about just these 50 odd small mouths. A minimum of the Rs 1,000 is needed for a day’s food including fuel.

We turn to you for sharing with them at least two day’s food a year. That will be yours gift of love. Their brightly smiling faces will be your awards.

Think. Tell others. Please try to broaden the ring of friendship and care so that more children can enter the fold.

What we are showing at Raipur club

The Satra, or Vaisnavite Monastery, is an institution which was established by Sankaradeva and his prime disciple Madhavadeva. Over the centuries, it has become intimately connected with the Assamese life and culture. From Majuli to Koch Behar West Bengal, the Satra dominates the social landscape of Assam and the entire state is integrated into one religious whole by this network of Satras. Today, the number of Satras in Assam is well over five hundred with numerous Vaisnava householders affiliated to one or the other Satra. The preservation of the Satras is a matter of great importance, more so in the light of the fact that they contain manuscripts, artifacts and antiques of immense historical value as well.

 The origin of the Satra institution can be traced to the time when the Neo Vaisnavite Movement initiated by Srimanta Sankaradeva was still at a nascent stage. Sankaradeva is said to have established his first Satra at Bardowa, his birth place, and then at different centers, during the course of his long and extensive travels across the length and breadth of Assam. He founded prayer - houses (Hari - Grihas) at almost all the places he preached the new religion. These institutions, which gradually expanded to also become centres of cultural activity, were known at the beginning, as Thān (Sanskrit Sthāna). During the Mahapurusha's lifetime, many Thāns were established all over Assam.
The Thān established by the saint's foremost disciple Madhavadeva at Barpeta was the biggest of all the Thāns. His apostolate consisting of his twelve chief disciples, who were entrusted with the duty of spreading the message of the Eka Sarana Hari Nama Dharma, also founded several important ones which, in course of time, spread all over the Brahmaputra Valley gradually growing into hundreds in number. The embryonic institution, Than, of Sankaradeva's time, thus developed into a full - fledged Vaisnavite Monastery and eventually came to have a new nomenclature - Satra.

The Nāmghar

The Nāmghar (literally Name-House) is a prayer-house where the devotees, present as the congregation, sing the Names of God. In the Satras, the main feature is the Nāmghar. It is in fact the permanent feature of every village, town and city of Assam. This has made Sankaradeva's religion a living religion.

The Manikut

The actual shrine where the sacred scripture is kept is called manikut. It is a smaller structure than the Nāmghar and is generally attached to the latter adjoining the eastern end. In addition to the sacred scripture, all the precious things dedicated to the Deity are kept in the manikut. It is the sanctum -sanctorum of the entire establishment and as the sacred scripture and all the valuables of the Satra are kept here, it is called manikut, literally the house of jewels.

The administration of a sattra

The administration of a sattra is run by the satradhikar assisted by his deputy and a number of other office-bearers.
A Satra includes the following members :

• Adhikar - The head of a Satra
• Deka - Adhikar - Deputy Adhikar
• Bhakat - Devotees staying inside the Satra premises 
• Sisya - Lay disciples

Shankardeva 2

Sankaradeva propagated a form of Vaisnavism known as Eka-Sarana-Hari-Nāma-Dharma, popularly referred to as ‘Mahāpurusism’, which considers Lord Krishna to be the One, Eternal and Absolute and stresses upon unqualified devotion to Him. He spread the liberal and humanistic doctrine of bhakti for the very first time in Assam. The religious system of Sankaradeva is strictly monotheistic and the worship of deities other than Krishna is strictly prohibited.
Sankaradeva is one of the most versatile saint-poets of india. His was a multi-dimensional personality:

There are poets and composers, there are saints and religious teachers, there are musical masters, there are preachers; but Sankaradeva was a genius in whom all these qualities were rolled into one. 
Sankaradeva was an erudite scholar, a prolific writer, a versatile saint-poet of unlimited merit, a lyricist of universal acceptance, a musician of high calibre, a pioneer in the field of Assamese prose, drama and dramatic performances, a painter and above all the greatest religious teacher-preacher-leader of the medieval Vaisnava movement in Assam which is rightly known as the Sankaradeva Movement. The confluence of so many qualities is very rare in a single person. He not only outshone his contemporaries, but also excelled his predecessors.

The environment in which the genius of Sankaradeva blossomed and bloomed was stirring and exciting, pregnant with far-reaching developments in every sphere of life in Kāmarupa, the then North-Eastern India. His many-dimensional contributions proved to be lasting value. He helped in various ways in giving a characteristic stamp and ethos to the life and society of Assam and thus has been rightly acclaimed as the father of the Assamese way of life, viz, spiritual, religious, aesthetic, cultural, sociological and literary too.
Indeed, Sankaradeva was:

like the glorious sun under whose warmth of mind Assam blossomed like a lotus of thousand petals (sahasradala kamala). It is difficult to imagine how deep and widespread was the influence of Sankaradeva on the cultural renaissance that burst forth in Medieval Assam.

Basically, Sankaradeva was a saint of the highest order who made a passionate protest against the atheism and dualistic theology as well as the ritual-burdened form of worship to replace them with the simple religion of love and devotion. For the needful, he accepted literature as the vehicle of communication to the masses. Thus, a literary movement along with the Bhakti movement took automation and thus he became a tremendous trend-setter in every walk of life.
The Sankaradeva Movement accelerated the pace of a renascence of literature and fine arts like music and painting. It brought about a new and comprehensive outlook on life and a distinctly healthy tone to social behavior:

The dignity of the individual endeavor of man as a distinct religious being and not as thrall of theological despotism was declared. Assam discovered herself as an integral part of the holy land of Bhāratavarsa, and gloried in that discovery.

Sankaradeva thought and realised the divine majesty in expanding new orbits and poured forth his spiritual experiences in words of great beauty to share them with the common people. His popularity was brought to every door. He had received the message of the Bhāgavata and mingling it with the devotion of his own heart he created a religious literature that has few equals. It was Sankaradeva who brought divine Krishna to the common masses as their Bhagavan. He inundated with his charming lyrics not only in the state of Assam but also sent out their beauty and fragrance to the neighbouring provinces where the aroma of Sankaradeva continues to live even today.
Perhaps no other poet’s writing has woven itself in the mental texture of a people as that of Sankaradeva in Assam. Millions of Assamese people have found in his writings a moral code of social conduct and also a way of life. His writings have become a living faith, and Jai Guru Sankara, a sacred mantra for salutation as well as salvation.

Shankardeva

Sankaradeva (Sankardeva, Shankar Dev, Mahapurusa Srimanta Sankaradeva), is one of the leading saint-reformers of India. He was the founder as well as foremost exponent of the Neo-Vaisnavite Movement (NVM) in the eastern part of this country, more precisely, in the region now known as Āssām, in the 15 ^th - 16^th centuries of the Current Era. Historically, he was one of the earliest leaders of the NVM, a senior contemporary of Guru Nānak of the Punjab and Sri Caitanya of Bengal. Sankaradeva is a colossal figure in the cultural and religious history of Assam: Mahapurusha Srimanta Sankaradeva [1449-1568], saint-scholar, playwright, social-religious reformer, is a colossal figure in the cultural and religious history of Assam, India. He is credited with providing a thread of unity to Assam straddling two major kingdoms (Ahom and Koch kingdoms), building on past literary activities to provide the bedrock of Assamese culture, and creating a religion that gave shape to a set of new values and social synthesis.

Mass Comm

Khuti Pujo

Satra of Assam - The field Planning