The Brahmaputra’s river islands: Majuli’s museums and the fight against erosion

Majuli, the vast river island in the Brahmaputra, loses metres of its banks to erosion every year — but the island’s satras, the Vaishnavite monasteries that have guarded Assamese culture since the 15th century, remain defiant.

The satras are repositories of mask-making, dance and manuscripts, and a new generation of monks has opened a museum and a workshop to keep the crafts alive.

Engineers speak of spurs and embankments; islanders speak of moving, house by house, further inland. Both are happening.