Rabha

The Rabha are a Tibeto-Burman people of the Lower Assam plains, centred on Goalpara and the neighbouring Dooars, with smaller communities in the Garo Hills and southern Bhutan. They are divided into groups including the Rongdani, Maituri and Kocha, and their society was historically matrilineal. Traditional life rested on rice farming, shifting hill cultivation, forest gathering and weaving.

Their language belongs to the Bodo-Koch branch of Tibeto-Burman and is close to Garo. Each Rabha group traditionally spoke its own dialect, while the Kocha speech stands closer to Koch than to the other Rabha varieties.