On a warm, breezy summer evening on August 29, 2026, a gathering took place in Bélang village, Mingmang, Dhemaji. A group of men, mostly in their thirties, including me, came together and discussed the heavy rains that had recently caused flooding in Nepal and Sibsagar, Assam. I listened to the discussion quietly, feeling the weight…
One incident from my childhood in our village has remained etched in my memory. The parents of one of my cousins decided to send him to Lakhimpur to continue his studies in an English-medium school. As soon as the rest of us in our peer group heard the news, we began teasing him about how…
Introduction Communities and societies are developed and sustained through the collective participation of both men and women in social, cultural, economic and household activities. In every society, women contribute significantly to family welfare, cultural continuity and community development. Particularly in indigenous communities, women play an important role in preserving traditional knowledge, customs, language and social…
Introduction – Conservation and local communities “Why does the government treat us like this? We are the indigenous people and they keep threatening our livelihood for the Park”, said Manas Kutum, in a frustrated tone, and continued further, “We also care about the animals, we help the animals by providing them food from our farmland.”…
About 2 years ago, I was speaking at a private university on the outskirts of Delhi, India. A friend who teaches at the university had invited me to speak on issues of tribes, especially my community—the Misings—in Assam. At the end of the lecture, during the Q&A, one of the attendees asked me why tribes…
1.Introduction Kaziranga National Park (KNP) is home to many riverine communities and wildlife, and is globally recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The region is inhabited by communities such as Mising, Nepali, Adivasi/tea garden workers (OBCs), and Kaibarta (SC), though the Mising community predominantly populates it. Approximately 50,000 farms, 30 villages located in the…
Marriage is one the longest surviving social institutions in human history. Its meaning is deeply embedded in social and cultural norms. Political and economic structures, religious doctrines have historically shaped its meaning and function. It is also closely linked with how property, sexuality and social hierarchy is regulated in a society. In many pre-modern societies,…
Over the past twenty years or so, researchers have increasingly used the term Zomia to talk about ethnic and linguistic minority communities who live at the edges of state control, especially in the mountainous regions of South and Southeast Asia. The idea was first proposed by the historian Willem van Schendel as a way of drawing attention…
‘Sodia tolloke’ Buruli Bolope’ Abunge’m daklupto te’re’n te’re’pe’ Pékam[1]Oua, Kamdang[2]oua, Sulli lok du:ne’ Mising oua.’ [3] (From Sadia to Buruli We the Misings occupy the riverine tracts O dear Pékam, O dear Kamdang, O dear Misings who live on sand.) With a sorrowful voice, Jugen lamented a line of a song, describing the current state of the Misings, who live…
There was a time when every ailment, every ache, every fever in a Mising household was treated not in sterile hospital rooms but under the open sky, with remedies plucked from the earth itself. The Mising people, scattered along the banks of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries in Assam, lived in harmony with nature, their…