Behdeinkhlam

Behdeinkhlam is the most important festival of the Pnar (Jaintia) people of Meghalaya, celebrated annually in July in Jowai, the headquarters of Jaintia Hills. Its name comes directly from its original purpose: "behdein" means "to drive away" and "khlam" means "disease" in the Pnar language, and the festival was historically an act of collective ritual protection against epidemic disease, cholera in particular, rather than a harvest celebration. The festival functions as a communal purification rite: it is an invocation calling on divine protection to ward off evil spirits and disease and to secure a good harvest, symbolically cleansing the land and community of misfortune before the agricultural season ahead. Traditional priests known as Dolois lead the elaborate rites that structure the three-day event, and young men take a direct, physical role in the ritual by beating the roofs of every house in the community with bamboo poles, a symbolic act of literally driving disease and evil spirits out of each home. Central to the festival are two ritual objects: tall, elaborately decorated bamboo structures called rots, built and decorated by local youth, and wooden posts known as khnong or dein khlam. On the final day, these structures are carried in procession to a pool at a site called Aitnar, accompanied by dancing to traditional pipes and drums. The festival's dramatic climax takes place at Mynthong, where community members dressed in their finest attire gather to watch dad-lawakor, a traditional football-like game played with a wooden ball between teams representing the northern and southern halves of the community, its outcome traditionally read as an omen for the coming agricultural year. Behdeinkhlam remains one of the most physically dynamic and ritually distinctive festivals in Northeast India, combining communal disease-warding ritual, elaborate bamboo craftsmanship, and a competitive folk sport within a single three-day observance.