October Dimasa Heritage Rally may boost touring bikers

​​A land without ruins is a land without memories – a land without memories is a land without history: so wrote Reverend Abram Joseph Ryan, an American poet, popularly known as the Poet – Priest of the South and also as the Poet-Laureate of the Confederacy.

Ruins are not alone physical remains of a building or a structure, but embodiment of memories. The past is deeply entrenched in them. Even in a stage of dilapidation, besides the stories of glory and loss, they also weave narratives of a sense of being part of that past which stand right there to be touched and felt.

The historical monuments of the pre-colonial Dimasa state today lie in a state of ruins across vast geographical areas in the southern bank of Brahmaputra to the Surma Valley. Dimapur, the capital of the most prosperous phase of the Dimasa history is in the state of Nagaland. These structures are under the supervision of the various Government agencies mandated by the Archaeological Protection Acts of Government of India. The ruins, standing erect in defiance against the ravages of time, an embodiment of spirit of the forefathers of Dimasa nation.

Dimasa Heritage Rally is an attempt to celebrate and pay homage to the spirit of the forefathers by the Dimasa Youth Forum (DYF) and Youth Association for Development and Empowerment (YADEM) along with other Dimasa social organizations. It ​shall be​ a pilgrimage to the holy spaces with humble hope ​of​ infus​ing​ the spirit of the forefathers in the Dimasa people.

The Heritage Rally Organising Committee is optimistic that the participants shall assemble, pray, confer, eat, sing and dance in memory and honour of the ancestors of yore in course of the pilgrimage. The rally will begin from the present to the known past with a hope to recover what is yet to be recovered and known through Khaspur-Harangajao-Haflong-Maibang-Hojai-Hawraghat-Diphu-Kasomari-Dimapur between October 26 and 29.

The Rally in the offing also aims to obtain signatures of Dimasas scattered across the region for submitting a comprehensive memorandum to the Archaeological Survey of India for the preservation of the Dimasa Heritage ruins.