Indian's Eastern Tribal States Are a World Apart

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Virtually cut off from the rest of India by Bangladesh on one side and Bhutan and Sikkim on the other, Assam and the small tribal states of northeastern India are a world unto themselves. 

Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Tripura were all created to satisfy demands by small ethnic groups whose languages and religions differ from that of Hindu-majority India.

Nagaland, carved out of Assam in 1963, comprises sixteen separate tribes, each with its own distinct customs, language and dress. However, English is the official language and spoken by most people.

The vast majority of the population of almost two million is Christian, with 75 per cent adhering to the Baptist Protestant faith.

Christianity arrived in Nagaland in the early 19th century with American Baptist missionaries and Nagaland’s people are devoutly religious. 

Manipur, a princely state under the British, was more closely aligned with neighbouring Burma than with India. Its three million people speak a variety of Sino-Tibetan languages.

It was made a union territory in 1956 and a state in 1972.

Hinduism and Christianity are each practiced by some 41 per cent of the state’s population, the latter brought by missionaries in the 19^th century.

Meghalaya was also formed in 1972, by severing two districts from the state of Assam.

About 75 per cent of the population of three million practices Christianity, with Presbyterians, Baptists and Roman Catholics the most common denominations.

Here, too, English is the official, and widely spoken, language of the state. The two largest native languages, Khasi and Garo, are affiliated with the Mon-Khmer and Tibeto-Burman families of east and south Asia, respectively.

Mizoram, too, was part of Assam until 1972, though it didn’t become a full-fledged state until fifteen years later.

Its one million residents are of diverse tribal origins who settled in the state, mostly from Southeast Asia, mainly in the 18th century. It has the highest concentration of tribal people among all of India’s states.

Mizo, a member of the Sino-Tibetan family, is the official language, spoken by 70 per cent of the inhabitants, but English is widely used.

The majority of Mizos, some 87 per cent, are Christians in various denominations, predominantly Presbyterian. Other major denominations include Baptists, Pentecostals and Seventh-Day Adventists.

Buddhism is practiced by most of the remaining population.

Tripura’s 3.7 million people were once part of the Tripuri Kingdom, a princely state in the British Indian empire.

It became a union territory in1956 and a state in 1972.

About 70 per cent of the state’s population comprises Bengali-speaking Hindus, the rest are mostly Tripuri. 

Arunachal Pradesh shares international borders with Bhutan in the west, Burma in the east, and China’s Tibetan autonomous region in the north.

It was known as the North-East Frontier Agency until it became a union territory in 1972. It acquired statehood in 1987.

Its population of 1.4 million can be roughly divided into semi-distinct cultural spheres, on the basis of tribal identity, language, and religion.

Many groups practice traditional indigenous religions, while the remaining population is divided between Christians, at 30.2 per cent, and Hindus at 29.4 per cent.

The state is one of the linguistically richest and most diverse regions in all of Asia, being home to at least 30 distinct languages in addition to innumerable dialects and subdialects.

Most of the languages belong to the Tibeto-Burman family.

Assam itself still has more than 31 million people, of which 61.4 per cent were Hindus and 34.2 Muslim.

An Indo-Aryan language, Assamese is the state’s official language and spoken by almost half the population. Bengali is the second most widely spoken language of the state, at 29 per cent.

Most Indians outside the region know little of these fringe states, but their relative obscurity has allowed them to retain their own cultures.