Guwahati/New Delhi
Assam made its way to the record books with the world’s biggest Jhumoir dance performance by nearly 9,000 dancers and drummers marking 200 years of the northeastern State’s tea industry that produces 53 percent of India’s total tea production, and celebrating the rich cultural heritage of the tea tribes.
The mega event was organised at Guwahati’s Sarusajai Stadium by the Himanta Biswa Sarma government to welcome Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose two-day visit to the State started on Monday. The grand spectacle also marked the beginning of the Advantage Assam 2.0 Summit and PM Modi later inaugurated two galleries of the Summit in Guwahati’s Khanapara.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and heads of missions from 60 countries attended the Jhumoir Binandini programme, which showcased the northeastern state’s vibrant traditions to a global audience. They had earlier in the day visited the Kaziranga National Park, famed for its one-horned Rhino.
The Prime Minister made an instant connect with the event as he highlighted Assam’s deep-rooted connection with tea and his own past as a tea seller. “Who will understand the smell and quality of tea better than a chaiwallah?” PM Modi said adding the northeast has found the best brand ambassador.
“Today, over 60 ambassadors from different countries will be able to feel Assam. They will take the flavour of tea with themselves. Assam is excited today. This entire stadium is buzzing with energy and enthusiasm. Your presentation has the smell and beauty of the tea gardens. No one can better understand the beauty and smell of tea then a chaiwallah,” PM Modi said.
“When so many people performed Jhumoir, it will be a record of its own. When I last came to Assam in 2023, over 11,000 people performed the Bihu dance and created a world record,” Modi recalled even as he listed out how his government is making “adivasi museums” and taking steps to increase the pay of tea garden workers, particularly women.
“Now 1.50 lakh pregnant women in tea gardens are getting financial help. The Assam government is opening 350 Ayushman Arogya Mandirs,” he said.
Assam Chief Minister Himant Biswa Sarma said the PM’s visit to Assam will send a message to industrialists that the state is now peaceful. He said Assam already had immense potential, but the law and order scenario pushed it back considerably over the last three-four decades.
“At the dawn of Independence, Assam had a higher GDP than the national average but several historical events since then had pushed back the state’s development. This is the time for a big turnaround and to start a fresh journey. I think we are on the right track,” he said.
ASSAM’S TEA INDUSTRY
The northeastern State’s tea industry produces nearly 700 million kg of tea annually and accounts for over half of India’s total production.
There are more than 1000 tea gardens in Assam where workers originally coming from Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and West Bengal engaged themselves and subsequently settled in Assam permanently. They are known as Tea and Ex-Tea Garden Tribes but are recognized as Other Background Classes [OBC] in Assam. These people not only constitute a sizeable chunk of the population in the state but also play a major role in tea production of the state — about 53% of the total tea production of the country.
In last year’s Assembly polls in Jharkhand, when Sarma as the BJP’s election co-incharge went all out attacking CM Hemant Soren for allegedly failing to stop illegal Bangladeshi migrants from usurping Adivasi land by luring tribal girls, the latter had dared Sarma to accord ST status to the tea tribes if at all he was such a big well-wisher of tribals. The tea tribes are accorded status of STs in States like Jharkhand.
JHUMOIR DANCE
It is the traditional folk dance performed mainly by the tea tribe community of Assam. The dance is also performed in West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha often during festivities, harvest celebrations, and social gatherings. Characterized by graceful, synchronized movements, Jhumoir is accompanied by rhythmic beats of the Madol (a traditional drum) and melodious folk songs that narrate tales of love, labour, and life in the tea gardens. This dance form is typically performed in groups, with dancers holding each other’s waists and moving in coordinated steps to the rhythmic claps and beats of the drum.
These tea tribes comprising descendants of workers were brought from Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and West Bengal to Assam’s tea estates under the British colonial rule in the 19th century.
These communities are now concentrated in tea-rich districts such as Tinsukia, Dibrugarh, Sivasagar, Charaideo, Golaghat, and Sonitpur in Upper Assam, along with Cachar and Karimganj in the Barak Valley.
