Tusu Dance

Understand

Where Tusu Dance comes from

Tusu (also Tusu Parab or Tusu Puja) is a folk festival celebrated around Makar Sankranti (mid-January) by the agricultural and tribal communities of south-western West Bengal, south-eastern Jharkhand and north-eastern Odisha, with smaller observance among the tea-tribe communities of Assam. It is centred on the worship of Goddess Tusu (Tusmani), the goddess of crops and the harvest. The festival is documented in the Banglapedia and in the Journal of the Anthropological Survey of India as a unifying cultural observance across the region's agrarian society.

How it's practiced

Tusu is observed for roughly a month through the month of Poush (mid-December to mid-January). Women of each household or neighbourhood make small, brightly dressed bamboo-and-clay idols of Tusu and float them in a local tank or river on the final day, singing Tusu songs (tusu gaan) all the while. Men build elaborate Tusu 'gats' (temporary bamboo towers) and erect them in open fields, accompanied by community fairs (Tusu Melas). The festival's songs, sung in the local dialect, are its most distinctive element — a living oral tradition still actively composed and performed.