Bongaigaon Bodo Dokhona Bagurumba Dance Weaving Lower Assam

Bongaigaon district in lower Assam is part of the Bodo tribal homeland in the Brahmaputra valley, where the Bodo — Assam's largest plains tribal community — maintain a distinct material and performing arts tradition including the Dokhona (women's two-piece wrapped dress) woven on backstrap looms in Bodo geometric patterns using cotton and endi silk, the Bagurumba folk dance performed by groups of women in Dokhona costumes at Bwisagu spring festival, and the Kherai puja ceremony of ancestor worship. Bodo women are renowned weavers and their distinctive loom-woven Dokhona fabric with black-and-white geometric motifs on a coloured ground has become an internationally recognised Assam handicraft. The Bodo people were the subject of a protracted armed insurgency by the NDFB and ULFA before the 2003 Bodoland Territorial Council agreement established autonomous governance over four Bodo-majority districts. Bongaigaon's handicraft cooperative, under the Bodo Cultural Society, markets Dokhona fabric and bamboo craft nationally through Sualkuchi and Guwahati craft outlets. Bodo cuisine — including rice beer apong, dried fish chutney, and banana-leaf-steamed rice cakes — is an important culinary heritage of the Brahmaputra plains.