The Bishnupriya Manipuris, officially known as simply the Bishnupriyas, are a group of Indo-Aryan people that live in

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

Tripura Tripura (, Bengali: ) is a state in Northeast India. The third-smallest state in the country, it covers ; and the seventh-least populous state with a population of 36.71 lakh ( 3.67 million). It is bordered by Assam and Mizoram to the ea ...

Manipur Manipur () ( mni, Kangleipak) is a state in Northeast India, with the city of Imphal as its capital. It is bounded by the Indian states of Nagaland to the north, Mizoram to the south and Assam to the west. It also borders two regions of ...

and northeastern

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mo ...

. They speak the

Bishnupriya Vishnupriya Devi ( bn, বিষ্ণুপ্রিয়া) , was the daughter of Raj Pandit Sanatan Mishra and second wife of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. She is believed to be the reincarnation of the Goddess Satyabhama, the third consort of Kris ...

, which is a creole of

Bengali language Bengali ( ), generally known by its endonym Bangla (, ), is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Bengal region of South Asia. It is the official, national, and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh and the second most widely spoken ...

and

Meitei language Meitei (), also known as Manipuri (, ), is a Tibeto-Burman language of north-eastern India. It is spoken by around 1.8 million people, predominantly in the state of Manipur, but also by smaller communities in the rest of the country and in pa ...

(officially known as

Manipuri language Meitei (), also known as Manipuri (, ), is a Tibeto-Burman language of north-eastern India. It is spoken by around 1.8 million people, predominantly in the state of Manipur, but also by smaller communities in the rest of the country and in ...

) and it still retains its pre-Bengali features. The most distinctive feature of the language is it replete with Tibeto-Burman ( Meitei) elements. The culture of the people is highly influenced by that of the Meiteis, with the exception of a few folk practices which are prevalent among the Meiteis. In the 2020s, the Bishnupriya people started demanding that the people of their ethnicity living in

should be given the status of an “

indigenous people Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

” of Assam and treated like other indigenous communities of the state. The

Government of Assam The Government of Assam is the subnational government of Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered ...

categorised them under the

Other Backward Class The Other Backward Class is a collective term used by the Government of India to classify castes which are educationally or socially backward. It is one of several official classifications of the population of India, along with General castes, ...

(OBC) Category but there is no legal recognition or official status of the Bishnupriyas in

. The Tripura Government categorised their language under the ''"Tribal Language Cell"'' of the ''"State Council of Educational Research and Training"''.

Notable people

* Guru Bipin Singh was a director, choreographer and teacher of Manipuri dance. *

Justice Justice, in its broadest sense, is the principle that people receive that which they deserve, with the interpretation of what then constitutes "deserving" being impacted upon by numerous fields, with many differing viewpoints and perspective ...

Surendra Kumar Sinha Surendra Kumar Sinha (born 1 February 1951), commonly known as SK Sinha is a Bangladeshi lawyer and jurist who served as the 21st Chief Justice of Bangladesh. He resigned from the position in November 2017 amid the 16th amendment verdict controv ...

, former

Chief Justice of Bangladesh The chief justice of Bangladesh ( bn, বাংলাদেশের প্রধান বিচারপতি — ) is the chief amongst the judges of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, and also head of the whole judicial establishments, inclu ...

References and notes

Ethnic groups in Northeast India Ethnic groups in Bangladesh {{India-ethno-stub