Return to the royal hills: A living link to 600 years of Ahom glory

During World Heritage Week this November, I returned to Charaideo, the ancient necropolis of the Ahom kings, and stood in silence among the Moidams that have watched over Assam for eight centuries.

To the distant eye they rise as gentle, verdant hills. To those who carry the memory of the Swargadeos in their blood, they are far more: the eternal resting places of the great Kings whose vision, courage, and statecraft sustained a kingdom through six hundred years of triumph and trial. I came, as a direct descendant of that unbroken royal line, to pay homage at the very mounds where my own forebears were laid to rest with the reverence due to heaven-bound sovereigns.

As I walked the sacred ground I could sense the lingering resonance of royal obsequies: the measured cadence of Tai-Ahom chants, the deep roll of war drums now stilled, the reverence with which kings once commanded even in death. Here, beneath these vaulted chambers and hemispherical mounds, lie not only crowned heads but the very idea of unbroken sovereignty, a tradition of statecraft and resilience that shaped the destiny of an entire region.

When UNESCO, in July 2024, inscribed Charaideo as India’s forty-third World Heritage Site and the first cultural property of Northeast India, the moment carried weight far beyond protocol. It was global acknowledgement of a civilisation whose contributions have too often been footnotes in larger narratives. Yet inscription is only a beginning. These monuments, fashioned of brick and earth, remain vulnerable to the quiet attrition of monsoon rains, invasive roots, and the slow erosion of public attention.

Heritage is not a heirloom to be admired from afar; it is a living covenant. My lineage imposes no privilege, only heightened duty. If the bearer of an ancient royal line can return to this soil during a week dedicated to the world’s shared treasures, then every daughter and son of Assam and India, every lover of human achievement everywhere, shares the same quiet duty to ensure these mounds endure for centuries yet unborn.

The Moidams of Charaideo do not belong to one family, one state, or even one nation. They belong to humanity’s shared memory (reminders that great civilisations endure not merely because they once they were mighty, but because succeeding generations accept the sacred charge to preserve, protect, and pass them on. 

I have accepted that charge. I invite my fellow citizens, and indeed the world, to stand with me.

So long as these mounds rise against the Assam sky, the spirit of a 600 year kingdom still speaks. For if we preserve Charaideo, we preserve not just the memory of a kingdom but we renew the promise of India itself: eternal, inclusive and indomitable. Jai Hind. Joi Aai Axom.