There are over 150 communities in the region and they have their own language, mores, beliefs, and rituals. The Assamese and the Manipuris had always had their own script while the others made do with either the Assamese script or the Roman. Some are using Devnagari now. Assamese had served as the link language till some thirty years when the whole area was virtually one political unit. The faiths of the people range from Animism to Buddhism but the process of Hinduisation inevitably informs all. The unity and integration of the diverse peoples in the Assam valleys came primarily not through religion but through the secular festival of Bihu or Spring Festival. All the communities in the valley have their own version of it though they are variously called and celebrated. The various harvest festivals are another meeting point. The other rites and rituals of the communities are distinct without really being separate and they afford connections. The hill communities within and outside Assam offer a differently arresting spectacle as they had lived in long isolation. Some are isolated even now. Another unifying factor is the brewing of rice beer, a commonality encountered all over the region.

All such occasions demand special artefacts. All events have allied rituals. The purely functional and utility items gain exclusivity as they are hallowed by tradition. Some areas are a preserve of the initiated and the professionals. They become a closed class. They are not to be tempered with, items in magic rituals for instance. The Mising community of the plains of Assam, for instance, have priestly chants that they call Mibu: A bangs, which are only traditionally handed down and even the priests cannot take any liberties with them. Their Oi-Ni: toms, on the other hand, are a species of folk music and they can accommodate all changing realities with aplomb. Some survive only as unmeaning gestures, as shadows, and modern researches into them have sometimes succeeded in retrieving lost meanings. They, therefore, cease to have little cognitive hold on their performers and audiences.

I have chosen to illustrate the craft practices of the region with the Missing and Karbi ethnic communities and the mainstream Assamese from Assam, the Angami from Nagaland, the and Jaintia from Meghalaya, Monpa and Nisi from Arunachal.

My choice is not necessarily arbitrary, as I want to underline living traditions to show the process of accommodation, translation, and transformation, on the one hand, and to make predictive propositions for the future on the other. The availability of materials has also been a factor.

Some of these are preserved only historically and ethnographically but others are vibrant and vitally alive. It is these, which I explore and exploit not only in my own work but also from the perspective of the technologically equipped design syndrome. This entails a study of pan-Indian symbology and the still burgeoning Northeastern motifs. The functional-aesthetic imperatives of the folk arts and crafts of the region reflect an abiding community and it is there that we have to trace the sources of the motifs. The sources of culture are always local; there are no trans-local sources. The passage from the local to the universal is, therefore, natural and that is how the modern adventure is informed, through a lively, imaginative interest in the past and its complex continuity. This translation and transformation would interest any artist or designer and this, I believe, cannot only be illustrated with the arts and crafts of the region but they yield insights and ideas to facilitate the inter-active process.