Folk and tribal dances

Story hook

It is Baisakhi, April 13, in a village outside Amritsar. The wheat harvest has just been brought in. To a quickening drumbeat of the dhol, a circle of men in turbans and bright chola kurtas begins to leap with their arms thrown up, knees raised high — the signature movement of Bhangra. Three hundred miles south-east, in Saraikela (Jharkhand), masked dancers in stylised costumes are performing Chhau — a martial-ritual dance where each character (Hanuman, Krishna, Mahishasura) is identified by their painted papier- mâché mask. In Rajasthan's Thar Desert, around the same time, the Kalbelia snake-charmer community performs whirling, undulating dances mimicking the serpent — a tradition recognised by UNESCO in 2010 as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The same month, in Gujarat, communities are preparing for the nine-night festival of Navratri — when Garba circle-dances will spill out across every street in Ahmedabad and Vadodara. In Maharashtra, Lavani dancers are performing for Independence Day village functions, with their characteristic ornate nau-vari sarees and percussive dholaki. In Assam, Bihu dancers are preparing for the Rongali Bihu spring festival, when the entire state will dance to the dhol-pepa-gogona ensemble.

India's folk and tribal dance map is denser than its classical canon. Where classical dances number eight, folk forms number in the hundreds — at least one signature form per state, often per district. The UPSC tests two things: state-form mapping (Bhangra → Punjab, Bihu → Assam) and UNESCO-listed forms (Chhau, Kalbelia, Kutiyattam, Ramlila).

Why this matters for UPSC

Prelims tests folk dance every other year — single-question state- form matching ("Lavani is associated with which state?"). Mains GS-I treats folk dance as a marker of regional cultural identity and a case for cultural geography. The UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list of Indian items is a separate high-value Prelims sub-topic.