The Northeast (Seven Sisters & the Himalayan east)

Eight states connected to the rest of India by a corridor twenty kilometres wide, and culturally connected to Southeast Asia at least as much as to the plains. The region is the meeting point of Tibeto-Burman, Austroasiatic and Tai peoples, with well over two hundred distinct ethnic groups and languages, and it was never part of any pan-Indian empire. Assam was ruled for six hundred years by the Ahoms, a Tai dynasty that arrived from Burma in 1228, adopted Assamese, and defeated repeated Mughal invasions - decisively at Saraighat in 1671. Britain took Assam only in 1826, after a Burmese invasion, and then created the tea industry on it, importing hundreds of thousands of labourers from central India whose descendants are now a distinct community. The hill peoples were governed under separate rules that kept the plains at arm's length, and missionary activity made Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya majority Christian. Partition severed the region's natural outlets through East Bengal, leaving it landlocked behind the Siliguri corridor. Insurgencies followed from 1956 in Nagaland and later across most of the region, sustained by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and by disputes over migration from Bangladesh that produced the Assam movement and the 1983 Nellie massacre. Sikkim, a Buddhist kingdom, joined India by referendum in 1975. The region supplies most of India's tea and much of its oil. Guwahati is the largest city. Kaziranga holds most of the world's one-horned rhinoceroses. Cherrapunji and Mawsynram record among the highest rainfall on earth. Arunachal Pradesh is claimed in full by China.

• Existed: 1200 CE – present
• Type: Entity