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.