An ancient ritual of rice wine, fire, and reverence — Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday, 31 October 2026, shared a glimpse of a sacred offering practised by the Tiwa community, one of Assam's most distinct indigenous tribes, drawing attention to a living tradition that rarely makes it to mainstream discourse.

In the post, Sarma described a ceremonial practice in which local rice wine, Chula, and food are offered to honour ancestors and guardian deities — most notably Ramsa Devota — to seek their blessings. 'Proud to carry our indigenous traditions forward,' he wrote, positioning himself not merely as an observer but as a participant in the custom.

Who are the Tiwa, and what makes this ritual significant?

The Tiwa — also known as the Lalung — are an indigenous tribal community concentrated primarily in Assam, with a distinct social fabric, oral tradition, and cosmology centred on nature and ancestral spirits. Their ritual practices, including offerings to guardian deities like Ramsa Devota, form the spiritual backbone of community life, marking the passage of seasons, harvests, and familial milestones.

The offering described — rice wine, Chula, and food placed before the deity — is a form of propitiation that bridges the living and the ancestral, a practice that anthropologists would recognise as deeply embedded in the animist traditions of Assam's hill and plains tribes. It is not performative ceremony. It is community memory, enacted.

Assam's tribal heritage and the politics of cultural visibility

Assam is home to dozens of indigenous communities, each with a constellation of rituals, languages, and belief systems. State leaders have increasingly turned to social media to spotlight these traditions — a dual act of cultural pride and political outreach to tribal constituencies that collectively wield significant electoral weight in the state.

Sarma, as both Chief Minister and convenor of the North-East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), has consistently framed Assam's identity around the coexistence of its many ethnic and tribal communities. Highlighting Tiwa customs fits a broader pattern of state-level efforts to document and promote indigenous practices among smaller, often under-represented communities.

For the Tiwa, visibility on a platform like this — shared by the Chief Minister to a national audience — is both recognition and record: a small but meaningful act of preservation in an era when many such traditions are quietly fading.

Traditions that survive in practice rarely need to be rescued — but they always need to be seen.