Rohilkhand & Katehar · Upper Indus–Gangetic Plain
Dance
Line and circle dances performed to drum and cymbal over several nights, with the Barka Nach retelling episodes of the Mahabharata in a Tharu version. Performed in the villages of the terai and rarely staged outside them.
Performed by: Tharu men and women, in separate and joint sets. Occasion: Holi, Barka Nach season, weddings
A figure titled Laat Sahab is seated on a buffalo cart and paraded through the city, pelted with shoes and abuse along the way — a ritual mockery of colonial authority that has survived as the town's defining public event, and requires heavy policing to keep it good-humoured.
Performed by: A designated man of the town, and everyone else. Occasion: The day after Holi, at Shahjahanpur
The sung folk-opera of the northern plain, in the same tradition as the Doab's Hathras and Kanpur styles.
Performed by: Touring troupes. Occasion: Fairs and weddings
Mimicry and comic sketch, historically attached to the Rampur court and now almost gone.
Performed by: Hereditary performers. Occasion: Weddings and fairs
Music
A major khayal school formed at the Rampur court in the nineteenth century by Inayat Hussain Khan, carried on by Mushtaq Hussain Khan, Nissar Hussain Khan and Ghulam Mustafa Khan, and brought to a wide public by Rashid Khan. Known for a full-throated, note-complete delivery and elaborate taans.
The instrumental tradition descending from Tansen's family, held at Rampur by Wazir Khan, court musician to the Nawab. Allauddin Khan came to Rampur to study with him, and through Allauddin Khan the line runs to Maihar, Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar — which makes Rampur the source of most twentieth-century instrumental music that reached the world.
Devotional singing in praise of the Prophet is central to Barelvi practice, and Bareilly is one of its major centres. Qawwali is sung at the dargahs of Bareilly, Badaun and Amroha, especially through the urs season.
Seasonal and life-cycle songs of the terai, sung antiphonally by women, with the Barka Nach cycle sung by men over successive nights.
The village life-cycle repertoire of the plain, in the Katehari register.
Theatre
Staged in every plains town through Ashwin, with a large Ravan effigy burnt at the maidan.
The Tharu narrative dance-drama of the terai, performed over several nights in the winter and centred on a Mahabharata retelling with local characters and a Tharu ritual frame.
Crafts
Peetal Nagri — the brass city, one of India's largest handicraft export clusters, employing several lakh people across thousands of small units and supplying homeware to Europe and North America.
Material: Brass, then aluminium, iron and mixed metal. Technique: Sand casting, hand engraving and chasing, and the nakkashi and khudai surface work; electroplating and lacquer finishing for export.
A town that makes the overwhelming majority of India's bamboo flutes — a few thousand artisans, mostly working at home, whose product goes out through Delhi to the whole country.
Material: Assam and Kerala bamboo. Technique: Bamboo seasoned, bored, and holes burnt and filed to pitch by hand, then tuned individually; every flute is finished against a reference note.
Drum-making concentrated in a few mohallas of Amroha, supplying the north Indian folk and devotional music trade.
Material: Mango and sheesham wood, goat and buffalo hide. Technique: The shell is turned from a single block, the heads laced with cord under tension, and the tuning ring set by hand.
Combs, handles, tableware and figures made from abattoir by-products — a craft that expanded after the ivory ban and now exports widely.
Material: Buffalo horn and bone. Technique: Heating, flattening, carving and polishing horn into laminated and turned forms.
A carving town on the Ganga side of the region, working in a heavier, darker idiom than Saharanpur's.
Material: Ebony, sheesham and mango wood. Technique: Deep relief carving and brass and bone inlay on turned and joined forms.
The folding knife whose name entered Hindi cinema as shorthand for menace. The long-blade version has been restricted for decades, and the surviving trade makes smaller working knives.
Material: Steel and horn or wood. Technique: Forged and ground blade with a folding lock mechanism and a riveted handle.
Kite string prepared for competitive kite-cutting, made in Bareilly in enough quantity that the city's name is attached to it nationally, alongside a cane and bamboo furniture trade.
Material: Cotton thread, abrasive paste, bamboo and cane. Technique: Thread coated with a ground-glass and rice paste and dried on frames; cane split and woven for furniture.
The dance, music, theatre and crafts of Rohilkhand & Katehar, from classical forms to village traditions. (18)