Dr. Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar addressing the launching programme of the State-Level Watershed Mahotsav 2025 in Kohima on December 8. (Morung Photo)
Our Correspondent
Kohima | December 8
Dr Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar, Minister of State for Rural Development & Communications, Government of India, is currently in Nagaland for official programmes and 26th edition of Hornbill Festival 2025 in Naga Heritage Village, Kisama.
“I witnessed the Hornbill Festival, rightly called the "Festival of Festivals," because when I looked at it, it didn't look like a simple festival, it felt like the heartbeat of Nagaland,” he said while addressing the launching programme of the State-Level Watershed Mahotsav 2025 at Naga Solidarity Park, Kohima on December 8.
This festival also reminded me that India's strength has always come from its diversity, vivid, vast and vibrantly alive, he said.
Today, seeing 17 tribes, each with its own customs, languages, attire and legends, but this festival made everyone come together, showing a symbol of a unity without actual uniformity in how we appear, Dr Sekhar said.
He said that every drum beat represented the heartbeat of Nagaland people, every dance step and music tone represented the memory and every costume reflects the identity.
“Today, the historical traditions are slowly fading away. However, Nagaland’s Festival stands as a torchbearer protecting heritage while embracing the modern future,” Dr Sekhar said.
This unstoppable spirit of youth in Nagaland, the music is being echoed across the global stages, he said adding that Hornbill Festival has become a global event with increasing number of people visiting the festival every year.
He said that Prime Minister Modiji always believed “India's cultural strength is the economic strength and at the end the whole thing comes out to one unique thing, the spirit, the human spirit, the spirit that danced fearlessly, that spirit that remembered your ancestors and the spirit that welcomes strangers from all over the world with warmth and the spirit that rises year after year to overall how the Union Government views Nagaland and other north-eastern states is quite different.”
“You know it was marginalized, it was only seen as a border or a frontier but Modiji is the only one who brought the northeast into the center of growth, not just a frontier but the forward growth opportunity that India can take advantage of northeast,” the Minister said.
Earlier, it was remote with no connectivity, now steel railways are being laid, new railway stations are being brought in, extensive highways are being built, digital connectivity has been improved unprecedentedly, he said.
Over the next couple of years, he said, many of these are going to be completed and then you will have unbelievable opportunity whether it is for farmers, artisans, for tourism, job growth.
