Garo Wangala Harvest Festival Northeast India

The Wangala harvest festival of the Garo people, celebrated across Meghalaya and the bordering Garo-speaking communities of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, is the most important ceremonial cycle of the year, dedicated to Saljong, the sun god of fertility and harvest, during which the new rice crop is offered before any rice wine is consumed from the season. The festival is characterised by the hundred-drum ceremony where Garo drummers perform for hours on large Dama drums, accompanied by flute players, and by the Wangala dance in which men and women form single-sex lines wearing elaborate hornbill-feather headdresses and perform stamping and swaying movements that enact the ploughing, sowing, and harvesting cycle. The Wangala also marks the end of the prohibition on singing and dancing imposed during the agricultural growing season, so the celebration has a cathartic community function beyond its religious dimension. The Meghalaya government hosts a state-level Wangala festival at Asanang near Tura each November, attended by Garo communities from across the region and by cultural tourists from Shillong and Guwahati.