President Murmu presented with a Ramman mask: What is the festival, and how did it originate?

In 2009, Ramman was inscribed in the list of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. According to UNESCO, the festival is a multiform cultural event that reflects the environmental, spiritual, and cultural concepts of the community, recounting its founding myths and strengthening its sense of self-worth by combining theatre, music, historical reconstructions, and traditional oral and written tales.

“In order to ensure that it remains viable, the community’s priorities are to promote its transmission and to obtain its recognition beyond the geographical area in which it is practised,” states the description on the UNESCO website.

According to the Ministry of Tourism, Ramman begins with an invocation to the Hindu god Ganesha, followed by the dance of the Sun God, an enactment of the myth of the birth of Brahma and Ganesha. The other dances include the dance of the Bur Deva along with Krishna and Radhika. After these initial performances, the focus now shifts to the enactment of the local Ramkatha (tale of Lord Ram). Episodes from Ram’s life are sung to a total of 324 beats and steps.

What is the origin of the festival?

In the work The Rāmāyaṇa Tradition In Central Himalaya by D P Sakalani, the writer says that though the exact date of the ritual remains unknown, the development is traced to medieval times. He says the practice was earlier pervasive but later came to be limited to fewer villages. The Ramayana tradition is believed to have arrived in the Garhwal Himalayas with the Vaishnavite saints.

Sakalani also says that what might have started as a purely religious tradition based on Ramayana to spread “Ram bhakti” later gained more acts with local folklore slipping in for entertainment. The myths and tales do not relate to Rama’s sojourn in the area, but “these rather locate the locales of Rama’s history in the region”, Sakalani writes. This is exemplified in other performances, including the Mwar-Mwarin dance, which shows the travails of the buffalo herders in their hazardous journey through the jungle to the hills. A tiger is shown attacking and injuring the Mwar. A set called Baniya-Baniyain Nritya, or the dance of the trader-couple, enacts their hardships with an episode showing robbers looting the merchant couple.

The festival also reproduces the strict hierarchy of caste prevalent in the state, with the Brahmins leading the prayers and performing the rituals. Moreover, the Bhandaris – Rajputs of the region – are alone entitled to wear one of the most sacred masks, that of the half-man, half-lion Hindu deity, Narasimha. Another important aspect of the performance is the singing of the Jagar, a form of musical rendition of local legends. The performance is advanced by the playing of drums by the Das drummers from a “lower caste” while Jagaris or Bhallas of the Rajput caste act as bards and sing the epics and legends.

The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage says that Ramman also celebrates ties between man, nature and the divine. Maize and barley seeds, sprouted in ritual pots, are offered to Bhumiyal Devta, who, in turn, promises prosperity to all, including agricultural yield and forest produce. The masks are accompanied by make-up using sheep’s wool, honey, vermilion, wheat flour, oil, turmeric, soot and locally grown plants and vegetables.