Ten Personalities from North East India Including Four Women Bestowed with Padma Shri Awards…
Padma Shri awards were also bestowed to ten exceptional individuals, four of whom were women, from seven of the eight northeastern states.
The four women are Assam’s Shakuntala Choudhary for social service, Manipur’s Lourembam Bino Devi, and Muktamani Devi for contributions to art and trade and industry, respectively, and Meghalaya’s Badaplin War for contributions to literature and education.
Choudhury is known as ‘Shankuntala Baideo’, a 102-year-old Gandhian social worker from Kamrup.
Lourembam Bino Devi, 77, is a renowned appliqué textile artist who has been preserving Manipur’s Leeba textile art for over five decades, while Muktamani Devi, 49, is an inspiring woman entrepreneur who exports and popularises handcrafted woolen shoes.
War, a 60-year-old academic and author, has worked tirelessly to promote the Khasi language of Meghalaya around the world.
In the field of art, Manipur’s 58-year-old doll-making artist Konsam Ibomcha Singh, a resident of Imphal East district, is preserving a more than a 100-year-old art form, and Sikkim’s Khandu Wangchuk Bhutia, 62, an eminent Tangkha painter specializing in traditional Buddhist paintings on cotton and silk, are both featured.
T. Senka Ao of Nagaland, Dhaneswar Engti of Assam, and V.L. Nghaka of Mizoram have all won Padma Shri honours for their contributions to literature and education.
Senka Ao, 76, has spent decades working to preserve Nagaland’s Ao language, whereas nonagenarian Nghaka, a Hindi author and translator from Aizawl, is best known for producing a Hindi-Mizo dictionary. Engti, a 66-year-old Karbi author and poet from the Karbi Anglong district, has worked tirelessly to preserve and promote indigenous languages.
Guru Tulku Rinpoche, a Buddhist Spiritual Leader from Arunachal Pradesh and the previous Abbot of the Tawang monastery, received the Padma Shri award as well.
