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Two Day Citizen Binodini : US Manipur Digital Archiving Workshop concluded

 

 

Nandita Nongthombam

04 October 2026 

The two day CITIZEN BINODINI : US Manipur Digital Archiving Workshop engaging the e ssays of M.K. Binodini Devi , organised by Dhanamanjuri University in association with Imasi : The Maharaj Kumari Binodini Devi Foundation of Imphal and Computational Resources for South Asian Languages ( CoRSAL at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, concluded successfully on September 30, 2026.

Held online on September 29 and 30, the inaugural workshop of the three part workshop focused on Digital Archiving & Literary Legacy, introduc ed participants to the principles and practices of preserving, documenting, or ganising and disseminating literary and cultural materials through digital technologies.

The workshop brought together students, scholars, researchers, archivists and members of the literary community to engage with the essays and literary legacy of noted Manipuri writer M.K. Binodini Devi , the youngest daughter of the then Dhanamanjuri College s founder Maharani Dhanamanjuri Devi The initiative is part of the broader effort of Imasi Foundation and its partners to preserve and promote MK Binodini Devi s literary and cult ural contributions and make them accessible to scholars and researchers worldwide.

The inaugural session featured a keynote address by Prof. W. Chandbabu Singh, Vice Chancellor, Dhanamanjuri University, followed by presentations by L. Somi Roy, Founder and Managing Trustee, Imasi Foundation, and Prof. Shobhana Chelliah of CoRSAL at Indiana University, Bloomington.

The academic sessions included Dr. B. Tarunkumari Devi speaking on the essays of Binodini, with Dr. Rojio Usham, Assistant Professor, Visva Bhara ti University, Santiniketan, as discussant. JB Lowe, PhD, spoke on understanding the digital library, with Dr. Ningombam Andropov Singh, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Dhanamanjuri University, as discussant.

A session on Copyright, Digitality , and the Legacy of M.K. Binodini Devi ” was led by Carolin Yanglem, Esq., with Prof. Ph. Sanamacha Sharma, Department of English, Dhanamanjuri University, as discussant. The opening day also featured Sydney Weber, Indiana University, on metadata and the or ganisation of knowledge for digital archives, with Dr. Binata Nongmaithem, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Manipur University of Culture and Vice President, English Literary Circle, Manipur, as discussant.

The second day focused on a hands on M etadata Workshop, led by Sydney Weber, with Prof. Shobhana Chelliah, Dr. JB Lowe, Dr. Mary Burke and Cora Burton contributing to the session. The workshop engaged participants in its concluding session on Irabot Day with M.K. Binodini Devi’s essay Eikhoigi Itei Irabot (Irabot, Our Brother-in-Law) as an archival text. The programme concluded with remarks by Prof. Shobhana Chelliah.

Speaking on the importance of preserving and promoting the literary legacy of M.K. Binodini Devi, Prof. W. Chandbabu Singh, Vice-Chancellor, Dhanamanjuri University, said, “We discussed with Somi Roy the need to preserve and promote the works of M.K. Binodini Devi. We also discussed the possibility of establishing an M.K. Binodini Centre for Studies. Such a centre would be important for Dhanamanjuri University, particularly for our students and scholars, as it would provide an academic space for sustained study and research.”

The Vice-Chancellor further emphasised the relevance of such an initiative to the university’s academic community, particularly students and researchers working in literature, history, culture and related disciplines.

The workshop was conducted under the aegis of the Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); the University of North Texas, Library at Denton, TX; with Poknapham Archive serving as the Manipuri archival partner. The collaboration brings together academic and archival institutions in India and the United States to strengthen the preservation and accessibility of Manipur’s literary and cultural heritage.

The workshop was supported by Prof. W. Chandbabu Singh, Vice-Chancellor, Dhanamanjuri University, as Chief Patron. Prof. S. Lanchenba Meetei, Dean, School of Humanities, Dhanamanjuri University, as Chairperson instituted a high-level committee of Dhanamanjuri University faculty members to head the conduct of the workshop. L. Somi Roy and Prof. Shobhana Chelliah served as Producers, while Dr. L. Romabati, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Dhanamanjuri University, served as the Project Convener.

The Project Coordinator was Nandita Nongthombam, Executive Assistant at Imasi Foundation. The successful completion of the workshop marks an important step towards building greater awareness and capacity in digital humanities and archival practices among students and scholars in Manipur and the wider Northeast.

Dhanamanjuri University, as the academic partner, seeks to provide a platform for sustained engagement with Manipur’s intellectual and cultural heritage, and open up possibilities for new conversations with Imasi Foundation around how literary and cultural memory can be preserved, shared and reinterpreted using international academic collaboration and research.

Photos available  here.

THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION AND M.K. BINODINI DEVI

By Falguni Rajkumar

October 16 2026

I visited the University of North Texas (UNT) at Denton near Dallas (USA) in mid-July 2026. With me were my wife Neerja Rajkumar and Aditya Vikram Rajkumar, our son. We were meeting Mark Phillips, Associate Dean and head of the UNT Digital library.

Three reasons compelled me to undertake the visit. First, the promptings from my nephew L. Somi Roy, son of Maharaj Kumari Binodini Devi (my Ichemsi, or Royal Older Sister), who regularly kept me updated about his untiring work in preserving the works and achievements in various other fields of his beloved mother. The sheer love, devotion and dedication of Somi to preserve Ichemsi’s legacy, her literary works in the field of arts and theatre, et cetera, was intoxicating.

The second is rather personal. It was my way of paying tribute to Ichemsi in my memories of her, having known her closely since my childhood. And one memory stands out. It was when Ichemsi came all the way from Imphal to Delhi via Calcutta to attend my marriage to Neerja in March 1974 at the beginning of North India’s torturous summers.

The third reason persuading me to visit UNT was her standing in the literary world of Manipur. The collaboration between Imasi: The Maharaj Kumari Binodini Devi Foundation  and UNT Digital Library was significant – and, I believe, the first of its kind. Such efforts need encouragement to pave the way for many more other authors and literary works of Manipur to follow. The efforts of Somi and his team are highly praiseworthy and deserve kudos.

M.K. BINODINI’S STANDINGS AS A WRITER IN MANIPUR

M.K. Binodini Devi’s standing and position in the world of arts and culture and in the literary world of Manipur is well known among Manipuri (endonymically Meiteilon) speaking people across India. Among the many interesting features and dimensions in her works, a few stand out. I will highlight some. I am not aware if these have been critiqued by other more knowledgeable and well versed persons. And even if others have, I seek the readers' indulgence to still allow me to put them down for my satisfaction.

The first feature that strikes me in her writings, novels, short stories, poetry, ballads et cetera, is the subconscious bridging of sensibilities between the rich sociocultural heritage of Manipur with the sensibilities and ethos of twentieth century Bengal, a world that she spent many years in while growing up. This gave the much needed tag of contemporariness to her works, and indirectly helped in catapulting Manipuri literature to find a place in the larger Indian literary scene. This effort was not new. A few literary icons of Manipur, like novelist Dr. Lamabam Kamal Singh attempted and succeeded in introducing this new genre in his popular novel Madhabi published in 1930. Even then Madhabi remained essentially Manipur specific, its fame confined within a very limited circle of readers. This was partly because Manipur was out of national reckoning and awareness. And Manipuri was a vernacular language few in India knew.

The evolution was notable even then because the new genre, style ,and approach to story storytelling suited the new generation of Manipuris, many of whom among them aware by then of what was happening in the literary landscape in India. More significantly the adoption was momentous because it happened during a period of flux: fast-changing times when Manipur was shrouded in an uncertain future, having lost its political standing; transitions from sovereignty to subjugation; from certainty to uncertainty. Its sociocultural values were under serious threat and the society in whole was put in deep introspection. Wriggling out of the chaos and asserting and establishing for Manipuri literature a place under the sun was no mean task.

It was during this period in Manipur’s history that Ichemsi Binodini’s works began to appear. Her people’s suffering from the wounded psyche of a broken history makes Binodini’s (she published under this mononym) position as a writer unassailable. Her first short story Imaton (Stepmother) was written when she was around 16 years old. To paraphrase contemporary literary thinking, with her contributions, MK Binodini Devi I1922-2011), along with Khaidem Pramodini Devi (1924-2006) and Takhellambam Thoibi Devi (1920-1996) became the literary torch bearers for women writers at a time when there was no one to give the much-needed support to writers from small communities and ethnic groups like the Manipuris.

No doubt, unlike many of her contemporaries M.K. Binodini Devi was privileged, having been educated in English schools in Shillong. She was later exposed to the rich ethos and sensibilities of Bengal and particularly those of Santiniketan, considered the epitome and centre of Indian sociocultural renaissance in general, and Bengal in particular. These influences and exposures that her contemporaries did not have, provided Binodini with an additional perspective or view of life around dimensions that her contemporaries did not get and have.

These exposures find resonance in Ichemsi Binodini’s writings, where she delicately weaves together the many strands of influences into the weft and warp of memorable stories. In short, even though, like most of her contemporaries, she dealt with and wrote about life and almost every aspect of various strata of people in Manipuri society from the poorest and weakest to the wealthiest and the mightiest; from the valley to the hills irrespective of religious predilections; on and about issues and subjects affecting people's lives as they encountered them every day, her writings carries a distinct perspective - a view of life that has witnessed additional layers of experiences. And the sensitivity with which she scripts her observations about women in and around her touches the most stubborn of hearts. Her writings overall acquire a very special patina which many successful writers among her contemporaries are not able to provide.

Another aspect and notable feature of Ichemsi Binodini’s writings came from her unique position of being the youngest daughter of Maharaja Churachand and his queen Maharani Dhanamanjuri and therefore had been an important member of the erstwhile ruling royal family. Having seen at very close proximity the vulnerability of royals as mere human beings sitting on the throne as symbols of power and authority, her views and ways of looking at history were much more nuanced. They are the richer and varied for having gone through additional layers of experiences. Given her very sensitive and artistic nature with refined sensibilities, additionally sharpened and polished by her exposures beyond the confines of her native Manipuri ethos and sensibilities from a very tender age, her views, understanding, and perspective about kingship, power and politics appear distinctly different.

Given her royal ancestry and connections, many of her essays and writings are both important sources of archival historical material for students of Manipur’s history as well as the public by providing a rare glimpse and insight about the general mood and life within the ruling family during British rule in Manipur. In the absence of many other reliable sources about the ruling family, Ichemsi Binodini’s biographical and autobiographical account of her family, especially about her father Maharaja Churachand, her step brother and his successor Maharaja Bodhchandra and others became important and valuable sources to understanding the inner dynamics within the ruling family. Discerning readers and critics can make out the difference where history begins and where it ends, and where fiction takes over. It is the interpolation of facts with fiction that makes some of her works both historically poignant as well as romantically captivating.

The interplay of facts and fiction neatly and poignantly threaded together by her sensitive and literary mindset that comes out in her semi-historical novel Boro Saheb Ongbi Sanatombi, (translated into English as The Princess and the Political Agent in 2020) about the life of her aunt Maharaj Kumari Sanatombi, the daughter of Maharaja Surchandra Singh, who married the British political agent Major (later Colonel) Henry Maxwell is a classic example. Her account, done with the utmost sensitivity and deftness keep the story line of the love story and the events of history delicately intertwined.  Setting it against the backdrop of the political consequences and social upheaval and storms the relationship created by being a marriage between a foreigner, a Christian, and a native princess from a ruling family of staunch followers of orthodox Vaishnavism Hinduism requires special aptitude. The novel won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1979.

 

IMPORTANCE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF COLLABORATION  BETWEEN IMASI FOUNDATION AND UNT DIGITAL LIBRARY

We live in very fast changing times. People have less time; no dragging around. It is the time of capsule living; things must come to hand in an instant and in a handy format. Access has to be instantaneous. Voluminous books and novels around the world are squeezed into unrecognisable forms and formats using new technologies. Publishers no longer keep copies of books anymore; most keep them in digital form, only printing books based on actual orders on hand.

Digital archiving is one such method and form. Electronification has entered the world of publication in a big way. Audiovisual and audio versions of books are now found around the world. Imasi Foundation itself has started recording readings of Ichemsi’s short stories. It is certainly a very welcome addition especially for present-day busy young Manipuri-knowing people to be able to listen to the audio podcasts of her short stories, like for example when they are driving on a long journey or doing some other work.

I do not wish to spell out the positives about digitization, the process of converting books, essays, poems, plays, manuscripts, folktales et cetera, literally every form of literary works, into easily storable, easily retrievable and accessible digital formats. There are plenty; the advantages are numerous. These are expensive methods. Smaller ethnic communities and peoples with lesser resources find access to these new technologies difficult. Consequently invaluable works of literature and histories et al, works of many poor communities and people are being lost to posterity.

One of the ways to ensure that this kind of situation does not happen to Manipuri literature, its rich sociocultural traditions and history is what the Imasi Foundation is doing with its initiative to work with UNT Digital Library, with CoRSAL (Computational Resources of South Asian Languages), and MEAP (Modern Endangered Archives Program) of the University of California, Los Angeles. It is praiseworthy because, for once, the collaborative partnerships provide global accessibility and universal reach to Manipuri literature. It indirectly makes it possible for the rich cultural heritage of Manipur, otherwise unserved by the new modern technologies, to be available. It provides an invaluable and important means to preserve, disseminate, and demystify the many hidden undiscovered talents of Manipur. In the larger regional context of North East India it provides similarly placed communities and groups a path to follow.

The digitization of M.K. Binodini Devi’s work is only the beginning. Hopefully many more works of authors and writers from Manipur will continue to be added on in the future. I wish the initiative taken up by Imasi Foundation all success in the days ahead.

 

Falguni Rajkumar is a retired IAS officer. He is the author of Rainbow People: Re-inventing Northeast India(2010) and Breaking Barriers in Post-Independence India: A Journey out of the Northeast (2024). He lives in Gurugram.

 

Congratulations to Maaz Sheikh on his dissertation defense! 

Cora

October 3, 2026

Maaz Sheikh, one of CoRSAL's key contributors, recently completed his doctoral dissertation in Linguistics at the University of Alberta. In the dissertation titled Towards a Grammatical Description of Zangskari, he began the work of creating a descriptive grammar for the Zangskari language. Zangskari is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the Zanskar region of Ladakh, India. It has about 10,000 speakers, but many of these speakers are disfavoring the use of Zangskari in favori of Ladakhi, the lingua franca of the region. In the paper-based dissertation, he provided the groundwork for a reference grammar for Zangskari, including a study of the grammar writing tradition in the Tibetic language family, a review of the sociopolitical context surrounding Zangskari, and a phonetic sketch of the sound system. Additionally, he provided an appendix of interlinear glossed texts for more than 600 Zangskari tokens. While the dissertation is not yet available in the archive, the videos from which he based the glossed texts are available in the Zangskari and Maaz Sheikh collections. 

Maaz began working with CoRSAL during his master's program in linguistics at University of New Dehli. At the time, he was investigating his heritage language, a language called Azamghari, an Indo-Aryan language spoken by a group of muslims in Azamgarh (Uttar Pradesh, India). During his work on this language is where he met the founding director of CoRSAL, who served as a supervisory commitee member for his dissertation. Shobhana emphasized the importance of archiving languages for documentation and preservation, as well as for outreach within and outside of the language community. After that, Maaz began to deposit materials with the archive as he collected new linguistic data from the communities he was working with. Maaz wrote the first descriptive work on Azamghari, which is available here in the archive! The entire Azamghari collection, with many materials provided by Maaz, can be found here. He has also done linguistic work on Ladakhi (Tibetic) and Bhojpuri (Indo-Aryan).  

Maaz especially wanted to emphasize how archiving his language data with CoRSAL was easier than he expected, and it is something that can be beneficial to so many people. The material can be useful to the communities themselves as well as to researchers of related languages, who can continue to provide documentary material. 

 

 

Bringing Binodini’s Literary Archive to Students and Scholars in Manipur

Shobhana

Septermber 30 2026

On September 29–30, 2026, students, literary figures, and archivists came together virtually for the first of three workshops devoted to preserving and sharing the collections of Maharaj Kumari Binodini Devi, held by the IMASI Foundation in Manipur.

With funding from the UCLA Library’s Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP), linguists at Indiana University working with the Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL) are collaborating with the IMASI Foundation team to digitize Binodini’s literary works, poetry, plays, photographs, and films. The digitized collections will be housed in UCLA’s MEAP digital collections and in the CoRSAL repository within the University of North Texas Digital Library.

As part of this project, we have planned three workshops to connect the developing archive with the people who will study, teach, and use these materials. The first workshop was organized by Dhanamanjuri College in Imphal, together with the IMASI Foundation and the CoRSAL project at IU. Participants included many young students from DM College and well-known and respected literary figures from Manipur interested in studying and teaching Binodini’s works.

On the first day, we heard from community members about the importance of this work. Members of the CoRSAL team introduced the archive and discussed what it could offer to students, teachers, and researchers. CoRSAL team member Sydney Weber spoke about the importance of metadata—the descriptions that help people find archival materials and understand their context. An invited guest also discussed copyright, intellectual property, and the digital hosting of materials.

These presentations were intended to begin a conversation. Questions about how we describe, share, and use Binodini’s materials will remain part of our discussions as digitization progresses.

The second day was especially meaningful. We met with young students who will help us create metadata in the Manipuri language, written in the Meitei Mayek script. Sydney Weber gave a presentation and led an interactive workshop in which students tried their hand at creating metadata for one of Binodini’s essays.

Their participation is an important part of this project. Students bring their knowledge of the language and their understanding of the works to the task of describing the collection. Through this collaboration, we hope to create an archive that supports both scholarly research and the teaching and appreciation of Binodini’s work in Manipur.

Stay tuned for more news about the collection and our upcoming workshops!  Watch the proceedings on the Computational Resournce for South Asian Language YouTube Channel.

Alexandra Fort and Shobhana Chelliah presented at CustomNLP4U 

Cora

CoRSAL encourages the use of Automatic Speech Recognition in the creation of linguistic corpora. Shobhana Chelliah and Alexandra Fort  presented their paper on customizable Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) models for the documentation of low-resource languages, using the exemplary case of the South-Central Trans-Himalayan language Lamkang and based on data collected starting in 2008.

The hope is that ASR will be beneficial for speeding up the documentation process for researchers, and that customizable ASR models can provide more accurate, quicker transcriptions of language data. The paper in question took the transcriptions of Lamkang speech from six different language models that required different levels of data clean-up prior to analysis and compared them with transcriptions-by-hand. They did this in order to determine whether ASR models can help transcribe sentences more quickly than transcription-by-hand, and if so, compare the six models to determine which model(s) works best for Lamkang. 

One of the challenges they faced during the project was the fact that the community was in the process of developing their orthography while data was collected. This has caused some challenges with transcription because the orthography for the language is different in different data sets. They concluded that first updating their orthography and then working towards a customizable ASR model for Lamkang would be beneficial in providing translations for large numbers of sentences.  

CoRSAL Occasional Publications (COPS) 4 is out!!

Cora

Dr. Tikaram Poudel is a linguist and associate professor of English Language Education at Kathmandu University in Dhulikhel, Nepal. Recently, Dr. Poudel published a work through the CoRSAL Occassional Publications series called Interlinear Glossed Datasets for Manipuri: Examples from an ancient text, a modern novel, and elicited sentences. In this publication, Dr. Poudel provides interlinear glossing for hundreds of Manipuri utterances, specifically targeting case marking in the language. Poudel provides interlinear glossing for a portion of a pre-20th century manuscript and a modern Manipuri novel, in addition to providing glossing for sentences that were obtained through elicitation by direct translation. 

You can find a link to Tikaram's publication here.  

 

 

CoRSAL's Modern Endangered Archive Projects (MEAP) Project

Cora

These materials are unique because they provide, through the view of MK Binodini Devi and her writings, information on the lives and cultures of peoples who often go underrecognized.  General political instability in Northeast India has made scholarship on these cultures difficult. In addition, historically, collections in Manipur have not been handled and preserved according to their value, so that makes the preservation of this collection that much more important. 

These efforts have been made possible through the UCLA Library's Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP), which provides grants to help communities digitize and document cultural collections around the world. Through working with MEAP, CoRSAL hopes to make these materials available on their open-access platform to promote the study of Northeast Indian languages and cultures, as well as make these materials accessible to community members who cannot access Binodini's physical writings. 

Some of Binodin's work is already viewable on the CoRSAL archive  in the Imasi  Foundation Collection.

2026  Summer CoRSAL Heritage Language Internship (CHLI)

Shobhana

August 2026

The CHLI program aims to help Indiana students and their families explore how digital assets can be used to remember, preserve, and celebrate their community memories, including language, personal and family history, intangible cultural heritage, and material culture. This internship program, open to IU students of South or Southeast Asian heritage in the U.S. diaspora, was funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services grant entitled Community Memory and Language Archiving & Curation Training (IMLS RE-222696-OLS-23), awarded to the University of North Texas (PI Oksana Zavalina) and Indiana University (PI Shobhana Chelliah)

 In Summer 2026, five IU students of South and Southeast Asian heritage met with the CoRSAL team throughout July for virtual discussion, practical knowledge sharing, and lectures. Participants learned how to identify cultural items of interest and value, create a digital record of the items, save and preserve them, and share them with their families and communities. CHLI culminated with each intern creating a personal digital collection of heritage items, ranging from pictures accompanied by family recollections of their ancestral home in Southern India to rare books of hymns and prayers to materials used for community language education. 

We share here some reflections for the summer:

Intern Reflections

Intern reflection:  This workshop was a huge reflection for me, especially about my culture and helped me appreciate my language that I began to lose as I grew up and the importance of preserving languages. It also made me realize how valuable the items in my home are. They had been sitting there all this time, but I now see that they are important pieces of evidence of my culture and identity.

Intern Mallika reflection: I have always been interested in archiving and the preservation of cultural heritage. As a Human Computer Interaction Master’s student, it’s especially interesting to learn how digital tools can help with this. This internship was a valuable experience because it allowed me to learn more about my family heritage and traditions and be able to preserve cultural artifacts to show to future generations.

Moderator Reflections

Mary Burke: I was so impressed with the creativity of each students’ approach to building their collection–I am especially excited to see these projects develop as they continue sharing with their families and friends!

Justin Fuller: I enjoyed our meetings and discussions. They were a good mix of exchange of ideas with practical skill-building in a supportive and relaxed environment. The students remained engaged and excited about working on their projects, and it was fun seeing their collections, which were remarkably professional-looking after just a few weeks of work. I look forward to seeing how they continue to develop!

 

CoRSAL is excited to continue offering these workshops, expanding our circle of  family archivist and curators of family knowledge.

 

CoRSAL founding director Shobhana Chelliah interviewed by IU Center forResearch on Race & Ethnicity in Society

 

CRRES interviewed Dr. Shobhana Chelliah, Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics, about her work in language documentation and The Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL), a digital archive for source audio, video, and text on the low-resourced languages of South Asia. The archive is housed at the University of North Texas Digital Library and is managed at IU under a Collaborative Research Agreement between the two Universities. In this interview, we learn more about CoRSAL, the digital archiving process, and upcoming materials to be incorporated into the archive.

https://crres.indiana.edu/research/affiliate-spotlight/shobhana-chelliah-spotlight.html