“রক্তে মিশে আছে লাঠির ভাষা, রাইবেঁশে শুধুই নাচ নয়—এ এক যুদ্ধের স্মৃতি, আত্মপরিচয়ের আওয়াজ।”
“In our blood runs the language of the staff—Raibeshe is not just a dance, it is a memory of battle and the cry of identity.”
– Gurusaday Dutta
A Warrior’s Dance: Tracing the Ancestry
Raibeshe, also spelled as Raibenshe, is an energetic folk martial dance deeply rooted in acrobatics, bamboo props, and martial training. It is mainly found to be practiced in the rural regions of Bardhaman, Birbhum, and Murshidabad districts of West Bengal. At its core lies the celebration of warrior heritage that includes acrobatic stances, usage of weapon, and rhythmic movements, all aligned and choreographed around the use of a bamboo staff (raibansh). This art form encapsulates Bengal’s rich cultural practice of martial arts that centred around tribal communities and agrarian livelihoods.
The main component of Raibeshe is its elaborate choreographic sequence of dramatic bodily movements, leaps, rolls, and stylized handling of weapons. Acrobatic elements, such as cartwheels, somersaults, and high jumps, are displayed simultaneously in rhythm, along with drumming and traditional war cry. More concretely, it illustrates how martial practice is embedded in the daily practices and the celebration of masculinity, honor, and physicality in the identity of the community. Moreover, Raibeshe has folkloric religious affinity, particularly during village festivals, ritual ceremonies, or in honor of folk deities associated with protection and strength.
In the brink of modernity and evolving socio-economic structures, a number of folk practices are in decline, and Raibeshe is no exception. It is now, unfortunately, what is referred to as “festive” or “performance” folklore, largely institutionalized along the lines of cultural festivals, at folk research institutes, or by the government when sponsoring events for intangible heritage preservation. None the less, it draws on a solid martial tradition underpinned with hegemonic manhood and potentially an aesthetic pluralism encompassing tangible and intangible forms of art and identity. Though once widely performed, currently Raibeshe remains less promoted in the mainstream cultural narratives.
From Warrior Training to Folk Art: The Rise and Fall
The art form traces its practice back to the Padatik Bahini (infantry units) of 14th century Bengal where the practitioners were the bodyguards of zamindars and royal households. Communities such as the Bagdi, Bauri, Dom, and other marginalised castes were the creators and practitioners of this dance form. The skills required rigorous practice as they were mainly noted for their expertise and proficiency with bows, spears, and walking stilts – this contributes to the name raibansh or “bamboo warrior”. Their livelihood depended on baton and spear-based combat training during daytime and then presenting their capability, dexterity and mastery in rituals and performances.
However, during British colonial era, the Indian Arms Act was introduced in 1878 that restricted the possession and carrying of arms by any Indian without a license which, with its enactment, suppressed the martial practices among the tribal communities. The act made it illegal for any martial artist or folk performers to carry or perform using original weapons. Traditional Raibeshe training grounds were disbanded or discouraged under the pretext of this law. Raibeshe performers also lost royal or local patronage as the zamindars and princely allies feared that association with militaristic practices would lead them to lose favours from the colonial rulers. Over time, the practitioners transformed the martial art into a folk dance that was adapted to exclude original armaments and adopted symbolic gestures of martial valour. The combat drills were transformed into bamboo-based acrobatics and preserved martial drill under the guise of aerial choreographic dance.
Revival and Flourishing: Bringing the Warrior Home
In 1929, while visiting a rural fair in Birbhum, Gurusaday Dutt, a member of the Indian Civil Service, a folklorist, and a cultural revivalist, watched the performance of Raibeshe.
Dutt, a staunch believer in indigenous culture and folkways, was appalled by the performance; but what he did was not an expression of pleasure. Rather, he criticized the performance as overly ornate and stylized and lacking in the original martial ferocity. Disappointed by what he saw as an aesthetically-conceived imitation designed to appeal to city tastes, he spoke with the performers, encouraging them to do away with decorative flourishes and stick to the raw and combativeness inherent in the tradition.
This incitement yielded a significant impact. In reaction to Dutt’s challenge, the performers engaged in an impromptu and unstructured exhibition of physical prowess upon the red laterite soil of Birbhum. What unfolded was not merely a visual display but rather an epiphany: elevated jumps, tumbles, rapid bamboo blows, and gymnastic accomplishments that illustrated the true martial roots of Raibeshe. Embracing its political and cultural significance, Dutt took proactive measures to revive and institutionalize Raibeshe. In 1932, he officially incorporated it into the Bratachari Movement, a patriotic cultural movement that he founded to instill Indian youth with physical discipline, moral virtues, and patriotic fervor.
Dutt escribed it as a counter-narrative to colonial narratives that presented the Indians, especially Bengalis, as weak, submissive, or effeminate. By presenting Raibeshe at state festivals, school demonstrations, and cultural pageants, Dutt and his supporters presented Raibeshe as a living symbol of masculine virility, communal pride, and a form of resistance against colonial arguments. By restoring a martial folk genre from the marginal communities of Bengal, Dutt restored physical culture to being an instrument of national awakening and cultural honour.
In the contemporary period, Raibeshe has created a tenuous but recognizable niche in the cultural scene of Bengal. Although it has ceased to be practiced as an art form, it continues to thrive through government-sponsored festivals, collectives of performance, and patronage by various organizations. A case in point was the one in 2017 when approximately 288 artists participated in the Raibeshe Mela in Murshidabad, a festival recognized as part of a UNESCO cultural heritage program. At this point, organizations such as the Sarabhuj Dance Theatre, in addition to non-government organizations such as Banglanatak, are spearheading grassroots efforts to raise the status of Raibeshe in India. These efforts have taken the dance to the new frontiers of Goa, where it has been added to national competitions and intercultural exchange programs. Although it has lost its original martial context, Raibeshe continues to have a robust existence on the basis of communal identity, inherited tradition, and a resolute will to survive.
Symbols and Motifs in Motion
1.Raibansh : The bamboo staff, or raibansh, is essential to Raibeshe in two ways; as a prop and as a symbolic weapon. Dancers spin, thrust, and balance the staff in ways that would seem familiar to any military historian studying the combat drills of ancient peoples. These stylized movements, while less athletic than a spear fight in the midst of physical combat, have deep connections with the simulated spear fights and defensive stances in the Raibeshe performance.
Even if the durational action of Raibeshe is not true combat, the movements echo historical training regimes. The staff resembles historical combat experience for this community; combat training must have been essential due to the rural location and community’s need to defend itself against hostile neighbours. Their martial roots have been stripped from combat aspects, but they maintain selected physics and symbolically aggressive practice.
2.Martial Kata : Raibeshe utilizes weapon-based, or kata-styled movements directly related to encircled dancing, including stylized movement testifying the bow-draw, sword movements, and spear thrusting. It is important that there is a characterization of action, while no actual performance of arms is utilized, every type of hyper-expressive movement reflects deep martial characteristics. Each movement is willingly choreographed, performed and re-executed. Combat training is transitioned to dance because of choreography.
The reenactments suggest history, distance resistance, and discipline—the surfaced comparative parallels point out martial characteristics that distinguish certain historical accounts to contemporary examples of action and existence, that bring forward the identity of marginalized people to remember their eventually subdued warrior traditions before colonial restrictions were placed upon their weapon-bearing status.
3.Acrobatics, Balance, and Human Pyramids : Acrobatics in Raibeshe–human pyramids, shoulder lifts and balancing–present strength, coordination and trust. They frequently punctuate, often at the climax of an event driven by the tradition’s martial heritage, a variant of rigorous martial drills. Enhanced flips and stunts performed on volumes are part of dance’s martial identity. Therefore, acrobatics represent more than just performance; they represent cooperation, discipline and warrior ideology.
4.Costume and Ornament : Raibeshe performers dress in short white dhotis, malkocha style for mobility, with a red waist sash for valor. The right foot has only one brass anklet (nupur) for the accentuation of rhythm. All those brass instruments make for a loud percussive echo. Dancers wear limited clothing for mobility and accentuate bodies and mannerisms. The accentuation of size highlights the raw physicality of the mannerisms, movement and body when interacting with the terrain. The harmonization of visuality is tied into the history of use and purpose, as well as their agrarian and warrior prehistory.
5.Music and Vocal Intensity : At the same time the music and transition beats of Raibenshe come from loud percussive instruments such as dhol, dhak and kanshi making the sounds rather than lyrical songs. The dancer improvises to deliver sharp screams or vocal grunts which heighten body movement tension while attempting to vocalize and engaged sounds similar to battle. There are no melody based songs that focus on movement and rhythm emphasizing with a physicality of beat and sound with an avowed connection to ancestral memory and collective strength
A Cultural Shift: Inclusion of Women
Raibeshe, a vigorous martial dance that has traditionally been performed only by men in rural Bengal, has transformed in the last several decades, albeit slowly. Women had always been excluded for reasons such as the demanding physicality of Raibeshe and culture. These forms of masculine exclusivity began to dissolve in the late twentieth century. The first signs emerged in the 1990s and 2000s to offer space for women in Raibenshe through cultural revivalists’ attempts to bring back folk traditions and community-led efforts.
Non-governmental organizations like Banglanatak.com began new programs like Art for Life, which trained boys and girls as part of endangered folk traditions as well as space to embody Raibeshe. There were also growing struggles around the high school space utilizing, schools in general are more of inclusive space than other community institutions, cultural festivals that schools had and the state, had things like West Bengal’s Lok Prasar Prakalpa (Advocacy for Folk) organized, incentives for and consciously encouraging mixed performances, involving both female and male community members. Women’s inclusion into Raibeshe can be placed in a context of the current and historical trends of democratizing folk art and breaking down rigid gender roles in cultural heritage.
Journey through Screens and Stages
In recent years there has been an evident renewal around Raibeshe from the cultural scene—not just live performance, but in the non-performance space or more contemporary visual forms. A landmark piece will be the graphic novel Ajo Aache Raibenshe (Raibeshe Still Lives) which celebrates Raibenshe in surround; both visually and narratively, but in ways that presents this unique martial dance form to younger, urban audiences, and retains ethnographic integrity while assisting with this transmission.
In term of the stage, we can see the same resurgence taking place with several theatre companies like Sarabhuj Dance Theatre acting as a new galvanising agent for Raibeshe. Narthaki published a review of the group in 2025, presenting Raibeshe as a powerful example of “dynamic kinetic force and ancestral rhythm”, noting the emphasis on the physicality of the group as well as being faithful to the narrative. The first major international exposure for this form of dance took place at Lokotsav in Goa including the performance and national attention associated with it.
A review in The Navhind Times described the performance with comments about the acrobatics of using bamboo and the wheeled ‘dharani’ (platform), as well as the human pyramids indicating their appeal and both local and international audiences. These three different formats (graphic novel, theatre, festival circuits) together, provides validation for Raibeshe, which is a live cultural form that has always reinvented itself while holding key qualities associated with its own Bengal martial and agrarian roots.
In Retrospect
References
- Devi, Ragini. Dance Dialects of India. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2002.
- Gupta, Shobhna. Dances of India. Har-Anand Publications, 2002.
- Dutt, Gurusaday. Banglar Brata o Raibenshe Nritya. Kolkata: Gurusaday Museum Archives, 1932.
- “Raibenshe Dance.” Resource Centre for Cultural Heritage (RCCH) – banglanatak dot com,
https://rcch.banglanatak.com/folk-artists/raibenshe/ - “The Bodyguards Who Dance.” Navhind Times, 2020.
https://www.navhindtimes.in/2020/01/18/magazines/buzz/the-bodyguards-who-dance/ - “Folk Revivalism and Cultural Politics: Raibenshe and Beyond.” JHI Blog, 2023.
https://jhiblog.org/2023/02/14/raibenshe-folk-politics/ - “Bratachari Movement and Physical Nationalism.” Indian Culture Portal, Ministry of Culture, Government of India.
https://www.indianculture.gov.in/bratachari - “Raibenshe – Gosahin.com.”
https://gosahin.com/places-to-visit/raibenshe-dance/ - “Folk Dances of West Bengal.” Nad Sadhna Institute of Music and Dance, 2018.
http://nadsadhna.com/folk-dances/west-bengal - “Meet the Sarabhuj Raibenshe Dance Theatre.” Narthaki.com, 2023.
https://narthaki.com/info/rev23/rev2503.html - “Raibenshe Dance | Birbhum | West Bengal Folk Martial Art.” YouTube, uploaded by Folk Culture India, 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwaFUMzpaeI - “Raibenshe – A Folk Warrior Dance | Sarabhuj Performance.” YouTube, uploaded by Indian Classical Culture, 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sD1ICeWrIQ