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Eastern Mirror Desk
Dimapur, Oct. 9 (EMN): Dr. Temsula Ao, renowned poet, scholar, novelist and ethnographer from Nagaland, passed away on Sunday at Eden Hospital in Dimapur. She was 80.
A Padma Shri Awardee(2007), she was widely respected as one of the major literary voices in English to emerge from Northeast India. She was the recipient of the Governor’s Gold Medal 2009 from the government of Meghalaya, and the Nagaland Governor’s Award for Distinction in Literature in 2009. In 2013, she was the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award.
She was also the recipient of the Kusumagraj National Literature Award(for poetry) in 2015.
Born in Jorhat, Assam, she attended Nagaland’s oldest college, Fazl Ali College in Mokokchung for her undergraduate degree, while she obtained her MA in English from Gauhati University, Assam. She completed her Post-Graduate Diploma in the Teaching of English from the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages (now English and Foreign Languages University), Hyderabad and her PhD from North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong, Meghalaya.
She retired in 2010 as professor, Department of English, and also as Dean of the School of Humanities and Education at North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, where she had been teaching since 1975. From 1992-97 she served as Director, North East Zone Cultural Centre, Dimapur on deputation from NEHU, and was Fulbright Fellow to University of Minnesota, 1985-86.
Further, she was also the chairperson of the Nagaland Women Commission and fought for redefining Naga customary laws.
Her works have been translated into German, French, Assamese, Bengali, Kannada and Hindi.
Dr. Temsula Ao interacted with Native Americans as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Minnesota. These interactions gave her an opportunity to learn of their culture and heritage, most notably their oral traditions. Inspired by this, she decided to do the same with her community on returning to India. Thus, Dr. Temsula Ao spent 12 years recording the rituals, customs, laws, folktales, myths, belief systems and the like, which was published in 1999 as the ethnographic work The Ao-Naga Oral Tradition. This work has earned the reputation of being the most authentic documentation of the Ao-Naga community.