Luguburu: Ritual, Pilgrimage and Quest for Identity among the Santals Sumahan Bandyopadhyay 1 Abstract The present paper studies an event of annual pilgrimage and congregation of the Santal at Luguburu hill in Jharkhand along with associated performative practices of dance, song, speech events and rituals. Lakhs of Santals, the largest tribal community in eastern India, assemble at this place to offer worship to Lugubaba during the full moon day in the Santal month of Sohrae corresponding to October-November in English calendar. Pilgrimage is a new phenomenon in Santal culture. The earlier monographs on the Santal did not give any reference to this phenomenon. Martin Orans’ celebrated study on the Santals in search of a great tradition of their own has no mention of this event. The present study has discussed and analyzed the emergence of the phenomenon of pilgrimage. The study has argued that the search for tradition is actually linked to new cultural inventions in changed contexts as well as socio-political milieu. The new ‘cultural enactments’ draw elements from own as well as neighbouring cultures as the present case has exhibited. The rituals and associated activities built upon a ‘prior discourse’ leads to performative practice that is directed towards a celebration of identity of a community. Keywords Luguburu, pilgrimage, santal, invention, tradition, ritual, identity, performance Introduction The Santals are not only one the largest tribes of India, but also they are probably the most widely studied tribal communities in India. As early as in 1795, John Article The Oriental Anthropologist 1–14 © 2019 Oriental Institute of Cultural and Social Research and SAGE Reprints and permissions: in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india DOI: 10.1177/0972558X19835384 journals.sagepub.com/home/oan 1 Assistant Professor Department of Anthropology Vidyasagar University Midnapore, West Bengal. Corresponding author: Sumahan Bandyopadhyay, Assistant Professor Department of Anthropology Vidyasagar University Midnapore-721102, West Bengal. E-mail: sumahan.b@gmail.com