An Eye Towards East of Assam

Land of one-horned Rhinos, home to many wild animals, homeland of hundreds of the most endangered flora and fauna, nestles of wild birds and avifauna, Assam is called the “mother” of all states of Northeast India.

Assam, in the Northeast region of India, is a place of mixture of Mongolian-Tibetan, Aryan, and Burmese ethnic origins, with over 100 different ethnic groups and also of 45 spoken languages. Assamese cuisine is a mixture of different indigenous as well as external influence with a lot of regional variations.

Historical Land

Assamese and Bodo are the off ic ia l languages of the state, is closely related to Bengali. An unbroken record of Assamese literary history is traceable from the 14th century. Linguistically modern Assamese traces its roots to eastern Maghadhan Prakr i t , wi th strong inf luences from the Tibetan-Burmese and Mon-Khmer languages, which are spoken by ethnic groups in the region. Bodo is a Tibetan Burmese language. Sylheti is the dominant language in the Barak valley. Hindi is other important language in the state.

About two-third of the Assamese are Hindus, and almost quarter is Muslim. A majority of the Hindus accept Vaisnavism, which is based on the deity Vishnu. The Garo, Khasi, Hajong, Kukies and many other sub-tribes mostly inhabit the hilly regions of the state. The Bodo is the largest minority group in Assam and are concentrated in the northern areas of the mighty Brahmaputra River valley.

Distinctive Food

So while we are talking about the food habits and their dist inctive styles of cooking in Assam, we need to involve all communities that are settled in the state. But here as we cannot distinguish different foods and habits for all the communities, we will try to explore some of the major or common food items of the people of the state.