India, Sept. 29 -- The country's vanishing tribal languages, oral traditions, indigenous art forms and traditional knowledge will be the focus of a new five-year collaboration between the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) and the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), aimed at creating systematic documentation and preservation mechanisms for the country's diverse tribal heritage.

The two institutions signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Monday covering the identification, preservation, documentation, digitisation, publication and dissemination of tribal arts, music, musical instruments, cuisines and other cultural traditions. The agreement also seeks to document customary practices and traditional ecological knowled...