Ethnic communities

An ethnic community is defined as a category of people identified on the basis of presumed similarities such as a common language, ancestry, history, society, culture, nation, race or social treatment within their residing area.

There are around 220 ethnic communities in the Northeast India and more than 220 dialects. The eight sisters (Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Tripura, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim) are predominantly inhabited by native ethnic communities with a high degree of diversity even within the ethnic groups.