Bihu Festival Assam Harvest Dance

Bihu is the principal festival of Assam, celebrated three times a year — Rongali or Bohag Bihu in April marking the Assamese New Year and the onset of the sowing season, Kongali or Kati Bihu in October at the transplanting phase, and Bhogali or Magh Bihu in January at the harvest completion — with Rongali Bihu being the most exuberant and celebrated, involving the Bihu dance (performed by young men and women in pairs), Bihu music featuring the dhol drum and pepa buffalo-horn flute, and communities feasting and exchanging gammusa (handwoven cotton towels). The Rongali Bihu dance is performed outdoors in fields and village greens (namghars), with dancers in traditional Assam silk mekhela-sador performing swift hip and hand movements considered explicitly joyful and even sensuous, symbolizing the fertility of the sowing season. Community feasting (uruka) the night before Bhogali Bihu involves cooking communal rice, fish, and pitha rice cakes in temporary straw pavilions (bhelaghars) that are ceremonially burned the following morning as Meji bonfires. The pepa buffalo-horn flute played at Bihu is made from the horn of a slaughtered buffalo and produces a distinctive honking sound that is inseparable from the festival atmosphere. Bihu was recognized by India's Ministry of Culture as a national intangible cultural heritage element in 2024.