Guwahati: Rajon Das, a final year student at Silchar NIT, is on a mission which is not related to his electrical engineering course. 22 years, Rajon started walking on May 22 from Agartala to reach the last village on the Indo-China border in Arunachal Pradesh. Well, this is not just a walkathon. The 2000 kilometre walking mission of the bright young engineer Rajon Das is aimed at bringing the NorthEast region closer to mainland India.
A resident of Patherkandi of Karimganj district in South Assam’s Barak Valley has started the journey on foot to draw the attention of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) authorities for inducting a chapter for class VI to X syllabus about the Northeast for the spread of knowledge of the region. His tour is also aimed at promoting the culture, tradition, heritage and rich history of the Northeast for its growth and development.
Rajon Das told “Organizer”, “See, when a student from any part of North-East travels to North, South or West India, we don’t feel a cultural shock. This is because we have been reading about the culture, tradition, heritage, or history of India from our childhood in our school textbooks. But when a student from mainland India comes here, they feel tremendous cultural shock. They have never read about the North East in their schoolbooks. They don’t know about the region. We are part of the same civilization, still the distance is so much. So I feel students of the mainland India should read about NE from their school days, so that they come to know about this beautiful part of India.”
Rajon Das started his journey on foot from Tripura Sundari Temple (popularly known as Matabari), Udaipur in Tripura, on May 22. In the last 17 days, Rajon covered 400 kilometres from Agartala to Karimganj district in Assam via Mizoram. He will now travel to Guwahati via Meghalaya, which is almost 350 kilometres. His motive is to reach Maa Kamakhya Temple from Tripura Sundari Temple by walking. He will again walk to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh from Guwahati. Rajon Das has walked 12-13 hours every day since then and hoped that the tour would be completed within the next two months.
Rajon explains, ” We often heard about racist comments on the people of the North East in big cities of India. This is because of ignorance. If a student comes to learn about the region from his early days, the racism will end, which will bring more integrity amongst us. These students will become IAS, IPS and even lawmakers in the future and if they are aware about our region, it will help them to create specific NE oriented schemes for the development of the region.”
Rajon Das feels that lack of knowledge about the region was a hindrance to the development of the North East for many years.
He said that the people of India should know about its beautiful landscapes, tradition, culture and everything related to it in the picturesque Northeastern Region. The introduction of a chapter on the Northeastern Region in the NCERT books, particularly for class-VI to class-X students, will be helpful in making students of different parts of the country learn about the region, and this will help in its progress and development in the future. Earlier, Rajon Das completed a 62-day journey on a bicycle from Assam to Khardungla (Ladakh) with the objective of promoting the Northeast in 2021. Rajon Das was a student of Saraswati Vidya Niketan Patherkandi in Assam.
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