Assam is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of 78,438 km2 (30,285 sq mi). It is the second largest state in northeastern India by area and the largest in terms of population. The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur to the east; Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram and Bangladesh to the south; and West Bengal to the west via the Siliguri Corridor, a 22-kilometre-wide (14 mi) strip of land that connects the state to the rest of India. Assamese and Boro are the official languages of Assam. Meitei (Manipuri) is the official language of Hojai district and the entirety of the Barak Valley region, while Bengali is an official language in the three districts of Barak Valley.
Bhupen Hazarika was an Indian playback singer, lyricist, musician, poet, actor, artist, editor, filmmaker, professor and politician from Assam, widely known as Sudha Kontho. His songs were written and sung mainly in the Assamese language by himself, are marked by humanity and universal brotherhood and have been translated and sung in many languages, most notably in Bengali and Hindi.
Gauhati University also known as GU, is a collegiate public state university located in Guwahati, Assam, India. It was established on 26 January 1948 under the provisions of an Act enacted by the Assam Legislative Assembly and is the oldest university in Northeast India.
The Assam Valley Literary Award was conceived in the year 1990 by Williamson Magor Education Trust to honour creative writers who have enhanced Assamese literature.
Nabakanta Barua was a prominent Assamese novelist and poet. He was also known as Ekhud Kokaideu. As Sima Dutta he wrote many poems in his early life.
Rita Chowdhury is an Indian poet and novelist who writes Assamese literature and is a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award. She is the editor of the Assamese literary magazine Gariyoshi and a former director of the National Book Trust, India. She has been a professor and lecturer at Cotton College, Guwahati, Assam in the Political Science Department and was active in the Assam Movement in the early 1980s.
The Siva Prasad Barooah National Award is an Indian award given to individuals and groups in India for outstanding contribution to journalism, to promote news media excellence. It was instituted by the Kamal Kumari Foundation in 1999 in memory of Siva Prasad Barooah, the renowned tea-planter, philanthropist, politician, humanist and also the publisher of Batori, the first Assamese daily newspaper in Assam. He belongs to the famous Khongiya Barooah family of Thengal, Assam. The first award went to The Assam Tribune. The award carries a cash award of ₹2 lakh, a trophy, a Chadar and a citation.
The Kamal Kumari Foundation is a charitable trust in Assam established in 1990 by noted Indian entrepreneur, tea planter and philanthropist Hemendra Prasad Barooah in the fond memory of his mother Kamal Kumari Barooah, the remarkable matriarch of the Khongiya Barooah family of Thengal, Assam. It has been able to achieve acclaim and is renowned in the entire North eastern region of India for its charitable and constructive activities.
Siva Prasad Barooah (1880–1938) was a renowned planter, philanthropist, politician, and humanist from Assam. He was the pioneer or path-breaker in Assamese journalism who published Batori, the first daily newspaper in Assam. The Siva Prasad Barooah National Award, instituted in his fond memory, is being given to individual or group, by The Kamal Kumari Foundation since 1999, for outstanding contributions to the field of journalism. He belongs to the famous Khongiya Barooah family of Thengal, the family that emerged as the champion of Assamese interests and repository of Assamese Culture and traditions. He was the richest tea-planter at that time in India. He married Kamal Kumari Barooah in 1917 and noted Indian entrepreneur, tea planter and philanthropist Hemendra Prasad Barooah was his son.
Kamal Kumari Barooah (1899–1978) was the matriarch of the Khongiya Barooah family of Thengal, Assam. She was born to Mahendranath Mahanta and Swarnalata Mahanta at Borelengi Satra. In 1917, she married Siva Prasad Barooah of Khongiya Barooah family, the family that emerged as the champion of Assamese interests and repository of Assamese culture and traditions. Noted Indian entrepreneur, tea planter and philanthropist Hemendra Prasad Barooah was her son.
Ramesh C. Deka is an Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) specialist and the former Director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, which is globally recognised as the premier medical institute of India. He is one of the pioneers of cochlear implant surgery in India and performed the country's first bilateral cochlear implantation surgery.
Himanta Biswa Sarma is an Indian politician and lawyer serving as the 15th and current Chief Minister of Assam since 2021. A former member of the Indian National Congress, Sarma joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on 23 August 2015 and soon was made convenor of NEDA. He is a five time Member of the Assam Legislative Assembly from Jalukbari, having been elected since 2001.
Achyut Lahkar was the father of the Bhryamyman or Mobile theatre, and gave birth to the mobile theatre in Assam in the 1960s. He founded the popular Natraj Theatre at Pathsala in 1963 which performed across Assam and in other states for nearly 40 years. He was a pioneering dramatist, actor, director and producer and staged numerous memorable plays on the mobile theatre stage. He also published and edited an illustrated magazine called Deepawali for some time. He was awarded the Kamal Kumari National Award in 1997.
Hemendra Prasad Barooah (1926–2013), was an Indian entrepreneur, tea planter and philanthropist known for his contributions to Assam tea and tourism industries. He was honoured by the Government of India, in 2013, that bestowed on him the Padma Shri, the fourth-highest civilian award, for his contributions to the fields of trade and industry.
Joyanti Chutia is an Indian physicist who specializes in solid-state physics and plasma physics. She was among the first women who have headed scientific institutions in India when she became the Director of the Institute of Advanced Study in Science and Technology in Guwahati, Assam, which is the first major research institution in North East India. She is a fellow of National Academy of Sciences. She is an Emeritus Scientist at the Department of Science & Technology in the Government of India.
Sheela Borthakur was an Indian social worker, littérateur and the founder president of the Sadou Asom Lekhika Samaroh Samity (SALSS), a non governmental organization working in the socio-cultural and literary milieu of Assam. She served as the president of the organization for three terms, 1974 to 1976, 1990 to 1992 and 1993 to 1994 and as its general secretary for two terms, from 1976 to 1990.
The 7 Sisters North East International Film Festival which was previously called Brahmaputra Valley Film Festival (BVFF) is a film festival hosted in Guwahati, Assam, India annually since 2013.
Sobha Brahma was an Indian painter and sculptor. He lived and worked in Guwahati. He graduated from the Kalabhavana Visva-Bharati University Shantiniketan West-Bengal. Brahma developed a unique individual style that mixed traditional folk and modern Indian art.
Maharaj Kumari Binodini Devi was a writer from the Northeastern Indian state of Manipur. She wrote in Meiteilon under the mononym Binodini. She was best known for her 1976 historical novel Boro Saheb Ongbi Sanatombi, which won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1979. Its English translation, ThePrincess and the Political Agent, was published as a Penguin Modern Classic in 2020 by Penguin Random House India.
Asu Dev(আশু দেব), born as Ashutosh Deb Dhubri, Assam, India was a pioneer artist of Assam. He was a painter, sculptor and an Art Educator. During his lifetime he had worked as a Textile Designer in several Cotton Mills in Jessore and Khulna in Bangladesh, Ahmedabad, Surat, Kolkata, at the Janata College Titabor Assam and Assam Textile Institute Guwahati, Assam and at Weavers Training Centre in Dimapur Nagaland in the later part of his life. His distinguished style of painting, were he had experimented using fine and minute dots often like modern pixels, which was often addressed by art critics as pointillism. Asu Dev was a self taught artist who created his artworks from minute observation of the Nature and the working class, and his innate exposure to Srimanta Sankardeva the 15th–16th century Assamese saint-scholar, poet, playwright, artist and social-religious reformer. The miniature paintings from the Chitra Bhagawata and the traditional folk arts and culture of the region, becoming the prime subjects of his paintings. During his career spanning about fifty years of Artistic career dating to the 1930s, he had created around 180 Art works, mostly paintings, oil on canvas, water colour tempara, textile designs and motifs, illustrations, sketches, drawings and a few sculptures. In 1952, Asu Dev was among the first artists to hold, one man show in Assam.
