Indigenous Faith Day was celebrated across Arunachal Pradesh with great fervour and traditional gaiety on Saturday. The day also marked the 80th birth anniversary of Golgi Bote Talum Rukbo.
The main function was held at the Nikum Niya ground at Nirjuli, where believers and eminent personalities, senior citizens and locals were present in large numbers for the celebration that included a cultural extravaganza.
Addressing the function as the chief guest, All India Vivekananda Kendra vice-president Nivedita Bhide said that the pace of development would be on the fast track if culture, tradition and good habits are preserved and protected.
“Our identity is through our culture, tradition. Our Indian culture is diversified where people with different faiths and beliefs are living together but need to respect each other’s belief, faith, culture and tradition without criticising. Our tradition and culture need to be protected otherwise a time will come that our identity will be nowhere,” she said, citing instances of countries where indigenous faith believers were vanishing.
“Indian culture has a great attachment with our way of living, food habits, nature where the people have lots of respect and even worship sun, moon, food, river and mother nature that have great importance in our day-to-day life and deep-rooted traditional and cultural values since time immemorial,” Bhide said.
She said that India will become stronger if our deep-rooted culture, tradition and diversity is maintained, protected and preserved and appeal to one and all to extend cooperation with the people working in this field.
USA-based Facebook’s director of engineering Sachin Kulkarni emphasised on the need for more development in the State. “Good connectivity and communication in terms of road sector, health and education will bring more development and good human resource, but at the same time, we should not forget to maintain our tradition and culture. Otherwise, we may lose our identity and such has happened in several western and third world countries,” he said.