PROCESS OF ASSIMILATION WITH THE ASSAMESE IN NORTH EASTERN INDIAN TRIBES

All these tribes, as a result of living in the plains under the suzerainty of Assamese kings and coming under the influence of Hinduism, have become completely assimilated with the Assamese. Although the older folk are still to some extent bilingual, complete disappearance of their tribal languages is only a matter of time like the disappearance of the languages of the once powerful Ahoms (See the Picture below)

(The Ahoms are an important branch of the Tai people.(See the Picture below)

The Tai-Ahoms entered the Brahmaputra valley from the east, from Moung Mao in China through the Shan states of Burma, in the early part of the thirteenth century ) and the Chutiyas and numerous other races which had been inundating from time immemorial the fertile and alluring valleys of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries.
This process of assimilation did not extend to the hill-tribes mainly because of the inaccessibility of their habitat. There is little doubt that with the development of communications the same process would have taken place amongst the Garos (as has been happening before our eyes amongst the Mikirs) but for the advent of the British and in their wake the Christian missionaries, who in their zeal to preserve 'the separateness and originality' of the hill-tribes and to civilize them, admirably succeeded in dividing them from the people of the plains. The consequences of this civilizing zeal have become painfully visible today in the demand for a separate hill-state by the Garos and other hill-tribes of Assam.

PHYSICAL FEATURES OF NORTH EASTERN INDIAN TRIBES

As regards their physical features, the following picturesque description given by Colonel Dalton in his 'Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal' could not perhaps be improved upon. "Their fates are round and short. The forehead is not receding, but projects very little beyond the eye, which is small, on a level with the face, very dark and obliquely set. The want of prominence in the nose is remarkable. The whole face has the appearance of being flattened out, the mouth sharing in the compressed appearance and not at all prognathous." The average height of the male would be just above five feet and that of the female 4-3/4 ft.A few more characteristics added by Major Playfair would make the description complete:
"The women are not beautiful, especially when they pass middle age, but when young they are buxom and healthy in appearance and their good natured smiling faces are far from unattractive. A great disfigurement is the distension of their ears by the weight of enormous ear-rings, which often break the lobes in two. The men rarely have hair on their faces though some grow apologies for beards. If a moustache is worn, it usually consists of a few hairs on either side of the upper lip, owing to the custom of pulling out the rest."

This description of physical features would apply with equal aptness to most of the tribals inhabiting the plains of Assam, particularly the Kacharis.

"garos" From Dalton's Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal 1872, engravings with modern hand coloring

"kachari" From Dalton's Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal 1872, engravings with modern hand coloring

LINGUISTIC RESEMBLANCES AMONG NORTH EAST TRIBES

The Garos(see the Picture Above) belong to the linguistic stock called by ethnologists the Tibeto-Burman. They have close linguistic affinity with tribal races inhabiting the plains of Assam, the North Cachar Hills and parts of Tripura. Grierson, in his Linguistic Survey of india, encadres the languages of all these tribe under a single group called the Bodo.(see the Picture Below)

Among all these tribes, the Garos bear the strongest resemblances linguistically as well as physically to the Kacharis(see the Picture Below).

In fact the resemblances are so strong that they have led Major Playfair to believe that these two tribes originally constituted one, subsequently separating themselves into two, the Kacharis spreading over the North and the Garos over the south bank of the Brahmaputra. In support of this view he points out the similarity between the monoliths of Dimapur (Manipur Road) ,(see the Picture Below)

the ancient capital of the Kachari Kingdom and the Kimas or memorial posts which the Garos erect in memory of their dead. But this, as Major Playfair himself admits, is a comparison of the great with the small.

In his attempts to trace the origin of the Garos, Major Playfair further observes: "One of the evangelists of the American Baptist Mission in Tura (a Garo) who spent some time in the Ao country (Nagaland), told me that he had been asked by some Aos if he was not one of the descendants of a party of 700 Aos who left their country and travelled westward in the long forgotten past." Certain features common to the Nagas (see the Picture Below)

and Garos in the performance of their funeral ceremonies (the practice of tethering a bull to a Y shaped post before it is sacrificed) and other customs, especially the practice of head-hunting, point towards a link between Nagas and the Garos. Head-hunting was never in vogue amongst any other tribe in this region except amongst these two. Major Play fair surmises from these facts that the Garos probably inhabited originally some area near Dimapur and there, because of proximity, picked up some of the Naga customs and habits.

ORIGIN OF GARO TRIBES

THE GAROS inhabit the Garo Hills District on the western extremity of Assam adjoining the Mymensingh District of Bangladesh. Besides, there are large groups of Garos in the contiguous plains areas of the Districts of Goalpara
and Kamrup in Assam. A sizeable population also lives in the Mymensingh District of Bangladesh. About a lakh of these Mymensingh plains Garos— mostly Christians—migrated to Assam in the beginning of 1964 due to systematic persecution in Pakistan. Some thousands of these unfortunate people, deprived suddenly of their hearth and home, have been rehabilitated in the Garo Hills and thousands are still awaiting rehabilitation in a huge refugee camp at a place called Matia in the Goalpara District of Assam. The Garo Hills District has an area of three thousand square miles.
The Garos call themselves achik-mande (achik = hill; mande = man) just as the Lushais (another hill-tribe of Assam) call them selves Mizos (Mi = man, zo =hill). The original home of the Garos is not known. They themselves believe that their original homeland was in Tibet.
A legend to this effect has persisted amongst the Garos for generations. In his monograph on the Garos, Major Playfair points out certain linguistic resemblances between the Tibetan and the Garo tongues and also refers to the reverence which the Garos, like the Tibetans have for gongs and the value they attach to the Yak’s tail, although the animal never inhabited these hills. But such scrappy pieces of evidence are not sufficient for establishing a historical connection of the Garos with Tibet. It is more probable that like most of the plains tribals of Assam, the Garos moved into their present habitat through the north-eastern routes from China and Upper Burma. This movement was part of a great Mongolian influx into this part of India in prehistoric times. It is not merely possible, but very probable, that the movement started originally from Tibet and other parts of the Western China.