Northeast India is an ideal rendezvous of exquisite tribal culture, people, customs, life style and history of mutual co-existence. Historically being a tribal land, Assam is no expection. In the context of todays globalised modern world and resultant religious and cultural conversion, these communities and their indeginious culture undergo massive transfomations and some of them are on the verge of extinction. Though Government endeavours to put effort on preservation, it seems there are lack of seriousness and sensitivity on government initiatives. In an historic effort to preserve and promote tribal folk culture, publish tribal folk literature in a systematic manner and make people aware about small tribal groups,their culture,lifestyle and ensuing problems of these groups, North East Folk Culture Research Centre came into existence with a host of programmes. The research centre is a principal wing of AARHI – an NGO working in the field of education, child development and research oriented programmes on tribal culture all across Assam. AARHI is a first of its kind in Assam working on the field of research. Its chief archtitects are - Hemanta Kumar Saikia, Peim Thi Gohain, Rajib Ninkhi, Tonko Konwar etc. Their range of current and future work plan include preservation through Visual Media - Audio - Video , documentary film on distinct tribal cultures, publications of tribal folk culture, organizing workshops and fellowship programmes. Its recent praiseworthy attempt is the ongoing project of publishing two comprehensive books on two distinct tribes of Assam - Tai-Phake - Jeevan Aru Sanskriti by Paim Thi Gohain and Singpho –Jeevan Aru Sangram by Rajib Ninkhi. Second one is about the Singpho community
y which is pioneer in tea cultivation of Assam. Its a very rare, hardly seen efforts on the part of non-governmental organisations as sans any substantial funds form any governmental or any other agencies. Both the communities have paramount significance in the history of Assam and have a number of scope for research. To give effect to capture foklore on reel as part of their visual media plan, FCRCNEI is doing a documenatry on Tai phake community’s traditional life style for which the shoot is going on in Tai villages. Talking to NEV, Hemanta kumar Saikia of FCRCNEI is vey much sceptical of governments and intelluctuals on tribal people. He says that people do visit Tai Phake and other tribal villages as tourists and enjoy their traditional life style and foods. But no body cares about their development and preservation of their exotic practices. Moreover, FCRCNEI will also provide research facilities on tribal culture and make arrangements for lodging facilities at tribal villages for interested people from anywhere of the world. This will definitely enhance the prospect of broadening the research scope in outside of India.
A brief vignette of Tai Phake and Singpho community are given below Tai-Phake community is the only tribal community among Tai Mongoloid group in Assam still speaking the Tai language as their mother tong inhabiting at Namphake, Tipamphake village of Dibrugarh district, Borphake Monglong, Ningam, Longgao of Tinsukia district in Assam and Tirap and Lohit district in Arunachal Pradesh. The community is small in terms of population. Their living style have much of traditional touch, as still live in chang-ghar. They wear colorful hand woven dresses full of tribal artistry. They have a unique system of producing natural colours using leaves and roots of plants etc. Their dresses are called Fa- Mai, Hu- Sin etc. They are very paricular for their food .Tai-Phake delicious cuisine is the boiled rice packed on wild leaves (ko-pat).They practise a scientific method for preserving food whcih they call Nong-Chung, Pa-chung (fish-meat with sour fruits) for 20-25 days.Tai-phake are Buddhists by religion.Their folk dances include Ka-Pai, ka-pun”(welcome dance), “ka-phi (demon dance) etc. Singphos are known as the pioneer in discovering tea in Assam in British India. Singpho tribe lives in the hilly Changlong and Lohit district in Arunachal Pradesh and Tinsukia District of Assam.They migrated from Kachin, a region of upper Burma.They have similarities with other tribes like Jingpaw, Chingpaw, Theinbow, Kakhieng-kachin, Ye Jan.etc.Their language Singpho is in fact, the lingua franca among the Kachins tribal group like Zi, Lisaw, Maru, Lashi and Nungs.Moreover, Singpho language shares similarity with Tibetan languages as well. A tribe almost entirely depending on agriculture, tea plantation is their traditional agricultural activity.They professionally cultivate rice, rubber,soya etc. Due to constant warfare, they live mostly on hillside, however, now they are living in plain as well.Baka (mans wear), Bukang (womens wear), Bathang (women wear) are the dresses of the Singphos. Shapawng Yawng Manu Poi is the national festival of singphos held in the month of February.
