GUWAHATI: Earmarking of the core zone of Charaideo maidams — the graveyards of the Ahom kings and queens — is set to begin finally, marking the first major step to include the historic maidams in the list of Unesco world heritage sites.
The state archaeology department has completed the online bidding process for construction of the boundaries of the medieval era monuments scattered in Charaideo district to cover the core zone of around 576 bighas.
Charaideo is believed to have 37 king maidams out of a total 42 Ahom kings who ruled the Ahom dynasty from 1252 to 1854 AD. There are allegations that vast areas of the proposed capital complex have been occupied for tea cultivation and other purposes over the years.
A fund of Rs 2 crore for the construction and demarcation of the maidam of Chaolung Sukaphaa — the founder of the Ahom dynasty in Assam — was announced by chief minister Sonowal in 2018. However, utilization of the funds was pending due to lack of proper demarcation in the absence of a map of the historically significant site, located 23 km from district headquarters Sonari.
The Charaideo madams demarcation committee constituted by the district deputy commissioner prepared a map, including 42 plots of Ahom-era monuments. Of them, 24 plots out of them have already been surveyed by the state Directorate of Land Records and Survey (DLRS) between November last year and March this year, covering around 1263 bighas of land.
The locations of the surveyed areas were submitted by DLRS before the Charaideo deputy commissioner at a meeting of the demarcation committee in the presence of Assam revenue minister Jogen Mahan, Jorhat MP Topon Kumar Gogoi and historian Dayananda Borgohain on July 16. In the DLRS report, it was stated that the remaining plots will be surveyed soon.
On October 12, state archaeology minister Keshab Mahanta chaired a meeting of the Charaideo maidam world heritage site advisory committee in Dispur where this high-powered committee had a sitting to demarcate the core zone of the Charaideo maidams, covering around 576 bighas of land only that are currently under the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and state archaeology directorate. For an additional amount of Rs 25 crore to construct the boundaries of the core zone, it is inevitable to send the proposal to Unesco and the bidding was completed on October 14.
“The meeting decided that the limited 576 bighas of land will be the core zone, while the rest of the historically important areas of the site will be considered for the buffer zone later, including the maidam of Chaolung Sukaphaa. The dossier to be sent to Unesco for world heritage tag for Charaideo will have the core zone with around 576 bighas of land. The remaining surveyed and proposed plots will be considered later on,” said a government source. Renowned archaeologist KC Nauriyal, who had prepared a dossier for the stepwell of Rani ki Vav — a Unesco world heritage site in Gujarat — will lead preparations for the Charaideo dossier.
Conservation activist Zakirul Alam, who has been pursuing the matter for long and led the survey team on ground for preparing the map, said, “We congratulate the government of Assam. Special thanks to Keshab Mahanta for the spirit shown to take Charaideo to the global stage. At the same time, we are concerned about the core zone which consists only around 14 maidams of kings out of 37 maidams in Charaideo capital. This is not enough for the core zone. There is a possibility to reject the dossier due to lack of chronological order of the maidams as the dynasty’s founder Chaolung Sukaphaa's maidam is missing from the core zone.”
Alam, president of Media Management & Research Association (MMRA), an NGO mobilising support for the preservation of the historic Ahom monuments, added that the entire surveyed area of 1263 bighas should be included in the core zone, which is the evidence of the chronological history of all 37 kings.