President Attended Golden Jubilee Celebrations of Karbi Youth Festival

President Droupadi Murmu attended the golden jubilee celebrations of the Karbi Youth Festival at Taralangso near the Karbi Anglong district headquarters of Diphu in Assam on 17 Jan 2024. 

About Karbi Youth Festival 

The President is currently on a three-day visit to the Northeastern states and will be visiting Assam today. 

• The event will be attended by Assam Governor Gulab Chand Kataria and Chief Minister Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma.
• The administration of the Karbi Anglong district has announced that the Karbi People's Hall area, located about 7 km from Diphu and the venue of an upcoming festival at Taralangso, has been designated as a "no drone zone" due to the President's scheduled visit.
• To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the festival in a grand way, the organizers have increased the duration of the annual event from the usual five days to eight days. 
• The festival started on January 12 and its purpose is to display the lively culture and rich heritage of the Karbi community.
• The Karbi Youth Festival is the oldest and largest ethnic festival of Northeast India. It is celebrated primarily by the Karbis and other ethnic communities inhabiting the areas administered by the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council (KAAC).
• The Karbi Youth Festival began in the early 1980s and has become a model for other ethnic tribes to preserve and promote their cultural identity. 
• This little-known tribal festival in India is gradually gaining international recognition. Most of the ethnic festivals in northeast India originated in the later part of the 1980s, making the Karbi Youth Festival the oldest ethnic festival in India.
• This tribal folk festival showcases the folk culture of the Karbi tribe, who live in various northeastern states of India as well as other indigenous tribes. 
• The festival features more than 500 acres of land, 5000 ethnic artists, and over 800 stalls and exhibitions.

The Karbis linguistically belong to the Tibeto-Burman group. It is believed that the Karbi tribe entered Assam from Central Asia in one of the waves of migrations