The Mishing tribe is the second largest scheduled tribe in Assam, located primarily along riverine areas. They have a traditional patriarchal and joint family structure. Their culture involves festivals celebrating harvests like Porag and Amrok, which feature feasting, dancing, and the Ali-Ai-Ligang festival celebrated over five days. The Mishings traditionally practiced animism and nature worship. They have their own language but use Assamese for writing. Their staple food is rice and they consume meals three times a day, often featuring boiled greens, meat, and fish. Traditional clothing includes the sampan skirt, galuk top, and hura headpiece for women. In recent years, some Mishing youth

1. The Mishing Tribe of
Assam

2. Introduction
The Mishings, are the second largest schedule tribe of Assam.
Mostly they are based on riverine areas like Lakhimpur,
Dibrugarh, Sibsagar, Jorhat and Sonitpur.
The Mishing family is generally a joint family. The eldest
member of the family is highly respected. Inheritance in the
family is a patrilineal one, and the social structure - patriarchal.
After the father's death, the property is equally divided among
the sons. Daughters have no right over the property. Basically
they are peace loving and fun loving. There is no caste system
or ideas of slavery in the Mishing society.

3. Culture
‘Porag' is the social festival observed by the villagers after
harvesting the ‘Ahu' rice. Neighboring villagers are invited
for celebrations that go on through the night, with a lot of
singing and dancing. A great feast is arranged on the event.
The ‘Amrok' is the festival observed when food from the
harvested crop is offered. A large quantity of pork meat and
chicken is also offered along with apong, and the ‘Paskso-
Monam' dances are performed by the youth.

4. The ‘Ali-Ai-Ligang' is the most well-known and
widely observed festival of the Mishings. The
most important feature of the festival is the
traditional dancing and singing with Dhol or
drum, Pempa, Siphung, and Gagana. This
community festival is celebrated for a full five
days.

5. Religion
The traditional religious beliefs of the mishing are animistic.
They believe in different, usually invisible, supernatural beings
that haunt the earth and to which they offer sacrificial offerings,
usually chickens. Although nature worship as such is not a
common practice they do on occasion make appeasement to the
god of thunder and claim to be “children of nature”. The
mishing consider themselves to be descendants of the sun and
moon. They regard polo (moon) as their father and donyi (sun)
as their mother and always honour them first before holding a
ceremony, embarking on a business venture or making any
major decision in their life.

6. Language
The Mishings have their own
language, but no script: hence
they use the Assamese
language when the written
form is required.

7. Food
Rice (apin) is the staple food of the villagers. The people
have three meals in a day. One is taken in morning, one in
mid-day and another in the evening. Though, the villagers
now-a-days know various processes of cooking, yet boiled
food is still popular among them. Along with rice, boiled
edible leaves (e.g. dermi, ombe, pakkam, takuk etc.), meat
(adin) and fish (ango) are some of the popular food items of
the villagers. Dried meat and fish are very popular.
In comparison to other food items made of rice, apong (rice
beer) is a much popular drink among the villagers. It is of
two types, viz. Nagin apong and poro apong. Out of these
two types, any one is always taken at the time of meal.

8. Traditional Dress
The Mishing women are expert
weavers. They produce all the cloth
necessary for the family. The women
wear the ‘sampan' around the waist; the
married women wear an additional
piece of cloth around the hip.
On the upper body, they wear the
‘Galuk'; and adorn their heads with the
‘hura'. Among other garments, the
‘Yamboo' are the ‘riwi gachang' are
notable for the women; the ‘mibu
goluk', the ‘tongali', and the ‘gonroo'
are used by the menfolk.

9. Current Relevance
In 2009 an armed mishing organisation under the banner of
LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC COUNCIL OF MISHING LAND
(LDCML) was formed for a separate homeland for the
mishings. Now every mishing youths have the sentiment for
their own homeland while the older generation don't seem to be
much interested while keeping their demand only for sixth
schedule. There is a wave of awareness and nationalistic pride
among the younger guns of the tribes with a serious mindset
forming various pages groups in social networking sites.

10. Interesting point is that what compelled mishing tribe to seek
secession from Assamese society the reason may be years of
discrimination against tribals by Assam government and so
called high class elite Assamese society. Political and social
awareness amongst mishings, Carving for own separate
Identity also love for own culture and language which is going
through continuous threat due to assimilation with Assamese
society may be the most rightful reasons.