When we think of great Indian festivals, we tend to think of Diwali and Holi immediately, their light, color, and final exhilaration have become the essence of Indian “culture”. But underlying them and even more primitive is a deeper and richer tapestry of festivals that is not talked about in public. In remote parts of India in small villages, sacred shrines, and tribal territories are other kinds of festivals. They are alive, full of passion, devotion, and emotion. They are not photogenic tourist and marketing events, but “lived experiences” with centuries of faith, practice and communal belonging occasionally more vivid and refined than the great festivals we are familiar with.
In Madhya Pradesh tribal regions, the Bhagoria Festival illuminates Jhabua and Alirajpur markets every spring. It has its roots with the Bhil and Bhilala tribes, where it is the mark of the end of harvest and change to a new season. It also concurrently exists as popularly known as a love festival, a time when young women and men wear traditional clothing and play with gulal to get the fun of mate selection that often takes place immediately after the festival. Sounds of tribal drums, bamboo flutes and laughter of young couples surround the atmosphere. The name of the festival is taken from “bhag,” or “to run away,” based on young romance and elusiveness of tribal existence. Bhagoria is an escape from modern ideologies of courtship, choice, and color, and association. The festival has resisted colonization and modernity both.
Going further south, Tamil Nadu roads are set ablaze with religious passion in celebrating the festival of Thaipoosam, a celebration of Lord Murugan, Shiva’s warrior son. People will travel great distances to shrines such as Batu Caves and Palani using “kavadis,” complex wooden structures with peacock feathers and flowers strapped to their shoulders. Some individuals penetrate their tongues, cheeks, or skin with small spears to exhibit manifestations of endurance as a function of thanksgiving or blessings. It is overwhleming and humbling to see bodies swaying to drums, incense wafting through the air, “Vel Vel Muruga!” chanted along the street. This is not a theater performance. The festival is a surrender an offering of one’s physical and emotional strength to the divine.
Dating back to the dark forests of Chhattisgarh, Bastar Dussehra is India’s most remarkable festival, belittling a whopping seventy-five days of celebration. The rest of India observes Dussehra as the victory of Lord Rama over Ravana, while in Bastar, the milennial festival hails the devotion of Danteshwari the tribal goddess of the forest-dwelling area. Over a hundred tribal groups converge for the festival. Others make the journey on foot, day after day to Jagdalpur carrying images of their “deity” to join the procession. Thousands of hands will draw massive chariots through streets carried with brightly colored and decorated figures, while ensembles of musicians play traditional instruments. The festival experience is sincere, ancestral, and in its very nature collective, brought about by the response of a natural environment on, in, nature, religion, and tale told in ancestral time-tradition honored for ages uncounted and passed on as living deed.
East of that, in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj, the Chhau Festival married religion and art in a captivating dance form. The style of Chhau is performed during the spring festival of Chaitra Parva, among others, and consists of martial steps, elaborate masks, and mythological accounts of war and heroes and villains from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The dancers practice frantically for years under the Chhau festival, building discipline, commitment, and reverence for their craft. With the beating of the dhamsa filling up the evening, the dancers bound across the space, twirl, and strike poses that evoke divine wars. It is not performance; it is sacred expression through dance that invokes the gods in movement.
In Himachal Pradesh’s hill state, Kullu Dussehra immediately begins when Dussehra begins in the broader reaches of India. Within that time, several hundred gods and goddesses from neighboring valleys, arrive on palanquins for seven days, to visit Lord Raghunath, Kullu’s local incarnation of Rama. The visual spectacle is remarkable, white-clad priests, musicians, villagers, and gods wrapped in silver, silk and flowers walk through the dense mountain valley together singing and dancing. Dussehra isn’t just a spectacle, it’s a community and a festival. Every village is participating in the same spirit, regardless of caste boundaries or wealth boundaries. And likewise, on this same day, and at the same gentle turning of the seasons, in remote villages in Uttrakhand, we have Phool Dei. On this day, young girls in puberty go door to door, throwing rice and sprinkling the fresh flowers they picked while house hopping, at each door, singing soft lyrical songs of blessing the home with fertility. This ritual is humbling and beautiful all in the same moment, and it is also a deeply held respect for nature and its renewal process, its beauty and the earthly cycles of life. There are no community masses or firecrackers, only memories that bliss is possible in the most ordinary daily rituals.
The Pushkar Camel Fair in Rajasthan serves as both a spiritual pilgrimage and cultural extravaganza. The fair is held on the auspicious day of Kartik Purnima, which draws thousands of people to the sacred Pushkar Lake to cleanse their soul. Beyond the experience of connecting with religious practices, you can find the experience of a carnival environment of decorated camels embellishing them with embroidered shawls and silver decor, vendors yelling their prices in an auction manner, and performers dancing to the beats of drums. After sunset is where the infamous sand dune becomes alive with music or puppet performances and folk ballads. The Pushkar Fair is an age-old tradition that embodies each of the states devotion, livelihood, and art forms.
In the northeastern state of India, Meghalaya, the Wangla Festival is marked by the Garo people’s gratitude to the sun god for food from the fields. Hundreds of dancers and drummers dance in festive attire as their dances are echoed in the stunning green hills. The festival is all about giving thanks and togetherness because family and clans are giving thanks to nature in a way that feels cohesive.
And finally, there is Kerala’s spectacular Thrissur Pooram, a stunning collision of religion and performance. Festival elephants stroll draped in gold ceremonial attire, umbrellas navigate a pre-decided choreography in unison, and traditional drumming groups pound away, out and back through space.
These celebrations, spread throughout the geography of India, tell us something Diwali and Holi cannot that India’s spirit is not defined by the amount of light or color but by the richness of their devotion. Every festival, whether small or big, tribal or temple, holds onto a lifestyle centered on gratitude, spirituality, and community. They won’t be featured in any tourist brochure, but in their most basic aspects, they possess the most radiant face of India still celebrating not only the gods but celebrating the act of living.