Lungi and gamchaMen
The working dress of the plain, worn with a checked cotton gamcha over the shoulder that doubles as towel, head-wrap and carrying cloth in a climate where nothing stays dry.
Worn for: Everyday
Barak Valley · Eastern Himalaya & Brahmaputra Belt
Dress and textiles
Everyday dress in the valley is the Bengali plains set — dhoti and lungi, sari worn in the atpoure or the modern nivi drape — and the region's distinctive textiles come from the communities that arrived into it rather than from the Bengali majority. The Manipuri settlements of the 1820s brought a loin-loom and a fly-shuttle tradition that is still worked at home in Cachar, and the tea-garden communities brought their own dress from central India. Cane and bamboo do the work that metal jewellery does elsewhere.
What is worn
Dhuti and panjabiMen
The Bengali formal set, worn for Durga Puja, weddings and public occasions across the valley.
Worn for: Puja, weddings, formal
Sari, atpoure drapeWomen
The older Bengali drape with the pleats gathered at the back and the pallu brought over the right shoulder and pinned. Still the ritual drape for puja even where the nivi is worn daily.
Worn for: Ritual and household
Phanek and innaphiManipuri women
A wrapped lower cloth with a horizontal-striped border and a fine shawl over it. Worn in the Manipuri villages of Cachar exactly as in the Imphal valley, and woven in the same households that wear it.
Worn for: Everyday and ritual
PotloiManipuri brides and Raas dancers
The stiff, drum-shaped, mirror-worked skirt of the Manipuri bride and of the Raas dancer, worn with a transparent veil. It is built over a cane frame and cannot be folded away.
Worn for: Weddings and Raas Leela
Weaves and textiles
Manipuri handloom of CacharCachar
Phanek, innaphi, shawls and stoles woven on loin and fly-shuttle looms in the Manipuri and Bishnupriya Manipuri villages around Silchar and Lakhipur, with the temple-spire and lozenge border vocabulary of the Imphal tradition. Sold locally and through cooperatives; no geographical indication covers the Assam-side weaving.
Endi and cotton household weavingCachar, Hailakandi
Plain cotton gamcha, chador and endi wraps woven on household looms — utilitarian rather than decorative, and increasingly displaced by mill cloth.
Jewellery
Shakha and pola — conch and coral bangles worn by married Hindu womenLoha, the iron bangle, worn beside themGold nath and kaanbala for weddingsManipuri marei and khoiri worn with the potloiCane and bamboo bangles from the valley's own workshops
Traditional dress of Barak Valley — garments, handloom weaves, GI-tagged textiles and jewellery. (7)