Intangible Cultural Heritage of India

Intangible cultural heritage is the living part of a culture: not its monuments or objects, but the practices, expressions, knowledge and skills that communities inherit and pass on. It is carried by people, not stored in museums.

It typically takes the form of:

• Oral traditions: recitations, chants and storytelling.
• Performing arts: music, dance and theatre.
• Social practices, rituals and festive events: community festivals and ceremonies.
• Knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe: including healing and seasonal customs.
• Traditional craftsmanship: the skills to make traditional crafts (the craft skill is the heritage, not just the finished object).

UNESCO highlights four qualities of such heritage. It is traditional yet living: inherited but still practised today. It is inclusive: often shared across communities and borders. It is representative: valued because communities sustain it, not for exclusivity. And it is community-based: it counts as heritage only when the community itself recognises it as theirs.

To safeguard it, UNESCO maintains two lists:

• The Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity: practices that demonstrate the diversity of this heritage and raise awareness of its importance.
• The List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding: elements that communities consider vulnerable and in need of urgent measures to survive.

The entries that follow are India's inscriptions on the Representative List, in the order they were added.

Koodiyattam (also spelt Kutiyattam) is a combined dance-drama of Kerala and one of the oldest living Sanskrit theatre traditions. It was India's first entry, inscribed in 2008.

• It is performed by the Chakyars, a sub-caste who traditionally play the male roles. Women of the Nambiar caste play the female roles.
• It is mainly enacted inside temples, and its themes are drawn from Hindu mythology.
• A single performance can last from 6 to 20 days.
• The clown-like character Vidushaka narrates the background of the story in simple Malayalam, making it accessible. All other characters speak in Sanskrit.
• The chief accompanying instrument is the Mizhavu, a large copper drum.

Two traditions joined the list in 2008 alongside Koodiyattam.

Ramlila is a popular folk theatre of the Uttar Pradesh region that enacts the Ramayana through song, dance and dialogue.

• It is staged mainly in the period before Dussehra, over ten or more successive nights during the Sharad Navaratras.
• It is usually performed by male actors, who also play female roles such as Sita.
• A distinctive Ramlila has been staged since 1972 at Bakshi ka Talab near Lucknow. There, lead roles like Rama, Lakshman and Hanuman are played by Muslim youths, a noted gesture of communal harmony.

Vedic chanting is the oral tradition of reciting the Vedas.

• It consists of several pathas, fixed "recitations" or patterned ways of chanting Vedic mantras that preserve the texts exactly.
• It is regarded as one of the oldest unbroken oral traditions in existence. The texts were fixed roughly in the early Iron Age.
• UNESCO proclaimed it a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

These two entries are community ritual theatres tied to local deities and sacred stories.

Ramman (inscribed 2009) is a religious festival and ritual theatre of the Garhwal region.

• It is celebrated by the Hindu community of the Saloor-Dungra villages in the Painkhanda Valley, Chamoli district, Uttarakhand.
• Villagers make offerings to the village deity Bhumiyal Devta in the courtyard of the village temple.
• It is unique to this village and is performed nowhere else in the Himalayan region. Each caste and occupational group plays a distinct role.
• A key element is the singing of the Jagar, a musical rendition of local legends.

Mudiyettu (inscribed 2010) is a ritual folk dance-drama of Kerala.

• It depicts the mythological battle between the goddess Kali and the demon Darika.
• It is performed in village temples called Bhagavati Kavus, between February and May after the harvest.
• Performers wear heavy make-up, conventional facial painting, gorgeous attire and tall headgear to evoke the supernatural. Every caste takes part, which strengthens common identity.

Both folk dances were inscribed in 2010.

Kalbelia is a dance of Rajasthan, performed by the Kalbelia tribe of the same name.

• The movements resemble those of a serpent. The tribe was traditionally associated with catching snakes and trading snake venom.
• The songs are based on mythology. Lyrics are composed spontaneously and improvised during the performance.

Chhau is a tribal martial-art dance performed mainly in Odisha, Jharkhand and West Bengal. Its three sub-genres are:

• Purulia Chhau: West Bengal.
• Seraikella Chhau: Jharkhand.
• Mayurbhanj Chhau: Odisha.

Its other features:

• It is performed mainly during the spring festival, by male dancers at night in an open space, with the whole community taking part.
• It blends dance with mock-combat martial techniques, and its themes come from Hindu mythology.
• Masks are worn in all styles except Mayurbhanj Chhau, where dancers perform without masks.

Buddhist Chanting of Ladakh (inscribed 2012) is the recitation of sacred Buddhist texts in the trans-Himalayan Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir. It is performed by monks for spiritual and ritual purposes.

Sankirtana (inscribed 2013) is a ritual art of singing, drumming and dancing from Manipur.

• It is performed by Manipuri Vaishnavites to mark religious occasions and life-cycle ceremonies.
• It is practised in temples, where performers narrate the life and deeds of Lord Krishna through song and dance.
• A typical performance has two drummers and about ten singer-dancers in a courtyard hall, encircled by devotees. The main instruments are cymbals and drums.

The traditional brass and copper craft of utensil-making among the Thatheras of Jandiala Guru, Punjab was inscribed in 2014. It is India's only traditional craft on the list.

• It is an oral tradition passed down through generations of the Thathera community. They heat and beat metal into thin, curved plates.
• The metals used are brass, copper and Kansa (an alloy of zinc, tin and copper).
• Kansa utensils are recommended for medicinal purposes in several Ayurveda texts. This gives the wares both functional and ritual value.
• Maharaja Ranjit Singh patronised and encouraged the craft in the 19th century. The utensils include those used in the langar (community kitchens) of Sikh Gurudwaras.

Both were inscribed in 2016.

Nowruz (also spelt Nauroz) marks the New Year for the Parsis and is also kept as a spring festival by the Kashmiri community.

• It expresses the Zoroastrian respect for the environment.
• The custom is to lay a table holding a copy of the Gathas, a lit lamp, a plate of sprouted wheat or beans, a coin, flowers, painted eggs, sweets and a bowl of water with a goldfish (symbols of prosperity, colour, sweetness and happiness).

Yoga is the discipline of posture, controlled breathing, meditation and chanting aimed at self-realisation.

• It traditionally combines a series of poses, meditation, breath control and word chanting to build self-awareness.
• It was traditionally transmitted through the Guru-Shishya parampara (teacher-to-disciple lineage).

Kumbh Mela (inscribed 2017) is the largest peaceful religious gathering in the world, where millions take a holy dip.

• It is held on a rotating basis at four pilgrimage sites: Prayagraj (Allahabad) at the confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati, Haridwar on the Ganga, Nashik-Trimbak on the Godavari, and Ujjain on the Shipra.
• In Hindu mythology it recalls the Samudra Manthan (churning of the ocean). Drops of Amrit (the nectar of immortality) fell at these four sites.
• A full Kumbh returns to each site about once every twelve years. At Nashik and Ujjain, it is called Simhastha when Jupiter is in Leo (Simha).

Durga Puja of Kolkata (inscribed 2021) is the grand autumn festival honouring the goddess Durga's victory over the demon Mahishasura.

• It runs over the days from Shashti (the sixth day) to the tenth, with elaborately crafted clay idols installed in community pandals.
• It culminates in the immersion of the idol in a river. This symbolises the goddess's return to her husband Lord Shiva after her stay at her parental home.

Garba of Gujarat is the most recent Indian entry, inscribed in 2023 at the eighteenth session of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Committee held at Kasane, Botswana. With this, Garba became the fifteenth element from India on the Representative List.

Garba is a devotional ritual dance performed during Navratri, the nine-night festival of the goddess. Dancers move in circles around a perforated earthen pot holding a lit lamp, the garbha deep, or around an image of the goddess Amba (Durga). The circular movement symbolises the cycle of life, with the goddess as the unmoving centre. It is open to all, cutting across caste, gender and religious lines, and is sustained by community participation.

For revision, keep India's inscriptions in chronological order. Chhau came in 2010, Kumbh Mela in 2017, Durga Puja of Kolkata in 2021, and Garba in 2023. Among these, Garba is the latest inclusion.

India's intangible heritage is carried in large part by its tribal communities, and exams regularly test which tribe lives where. The Changpa are a nomadic pastoral community of the Changthang plateau in Ladakh, not Uttarakhand. They rear the Changthangi goats that yield the fine Pashmina wool, and they are listed as a Scheduled Tribe.

Other tribe-and-region pairs to fix in memory:

• Limbu (Limbo): an indigenous tribe of Sikkim and the eastern Himalayas.
• Karbi: a major hill tribe of Assam, concentrated in the Karbi Anglong region.
• Dongaria Kondh: inhabitants of the Niyamgiri hills of Odisha.
• Bonda: a particularly vulnerable tribal group of the Malkangiri highlands of Odisha, not Tamil Nadu.
• Agaria: the traditional salt-pan workers of Gujarat, who harvest salt in the Rann of Kutch.
• Shompen: a particularly vulnerable tribal group (PVTG), a category of tribes needing special protection, living in the interior forests of Great Nicobar Island.
• Buksa: a tribe of the Pauri-Garhwal and Tarai belt of Uttarakhand.
• Kol: a tribe of the Jabalpur region of Madhya Pradesh.
• Munda: a major tribe of the Chhotanagpur plateau of Jharkhand.
• Korba: a tribe of the Korba region of Chhattisgarh, not Kodagu (Coorg) in Karnataka.

The common traps are placing the Changpa in Uttarakhand, the Karbi in Himachal Pradesh, the Bonda in Tamil Nadu and the Korba in Karnataka.

The national symbols are shared emblems of identity, and their sources and dates are tested often.

• National Emblem: an adaptation of the Lion Capital of Ashoka at Sarnath, adopted on 26 January 1950. The motto Satyameva Jayate (Truth alone triumphs) inscribed below it is taken from the Mundaka Upanishad, an ancient philosophical text attached to the Atharva Veda.
• National Flag: the tricolour with the Ashoka Chakra (Dharma chakra) at the centre. The wheel has 24 spokes, taken from the Sarnath Lion Capital. The flag's design was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 22 July 1947.
• National Anthem: Jana Gana Mana, composed originally in Bengali by Rabindranath Tagore. The Constituent Assembly adopted its Hindi version as the anthem on 24 January 1950.
• National Song: Vande Mataram, composed by Bankim Chandra Chatterji in Sanskrit, not Bengali. It appeared in his Bengali novel Anandamath and holds equal status with the anthem.
• National Calendar: based on the Saka era, adopted in 1957. Its first day, 1 Chaitra, falls on 22 March normally and on 21 March in a leap year.

The classic trap statement claims Vande Mataram was originally composed in Bengali. The song is in Sanskrit, although it was published within a Bengali novel.