The ‘lai Haraoba festival’ concluded here on Monday at the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya. On the last day, ritualistic activities were carried out at ‘Umang lai’ the sacred grove of Manipur in the premises of the Sangrahalaya. The traditional festival of Umang lai Haraoba basically connotes the inevitable relationship between men and the nature. The festival is celebrated every year in Manav Sangrahalaya to promote conservation and protection of biodiversity. The adverse effects of biodiversity degradation, ecologist, environmentalists etc have made conservation of biodiversity as on issue of global significance.
Earlier, there have many traditional conservation practices of indigenous communities, which contributed to the conservation and protection of biodiversity-such practices were named as sacred groves. lai Haraoba means the Festival of Gods. The traditional lai Haraoba dance, which enacts the ‘Creation of the Universe’, was initially a part of the lai Haraoba festival. The dance is traditionally presented before the shrines of Umanglai, the ancestral God of the Meiteis, at the village temples. The principal performers are the maibas (priests) and maibis (priestesses), who are considered to be embodiments of purity.
They invoke the deity through their repetitive and rhythmic movements, which are highly symbolic. It is essentially a ritualistic dance and is considered to be the precursor of the classical Manipuri dance form as seen today. The maibas and maibis, through their dance, trace the philosophy of the Meitei people and describe evocatively their way of life.