An instructor dances as participants follow the dance steps in a Bihu dance workshop ahead of the Rongali Bihu Festival in Guwahati, India, on April 8, 2025. (Photo by David Talukdar/NurPhoto/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Migrants try to board an overcrowded train as they leave the city at the Jammu Tawi railway station in Jammu on May 10, 2025, amid the ongoing border tensions between India and Pakistan after the Kashmir tourist attack. Pakistan and India on May 10 stepped up missile, drone and artillery attacks in a fourth straight day of conflict, as the US urged both sides to restore dialogue to “avoid miscalculation”. (Photo by Money Sharma/AFP Photo)

A Kathakali classical dancer (2L) watches artists rehearse the traditional folk dance Pulikkali (Tiger Dance) as they wait backstage before their performance at a cultural festival in Chennai on July 12, 2025. (Photo by R. Satish Babu/AFP Photo)

For more than 2,000 years, women from the Baiga tribe in the highland district of Dindori, in central India’s Madhya Pradesh state, have been tattooed. Sumintra, 25, from Bona village, has the markings across her forehead, legs and arms. The women who work as tattoo artists are knowledgable about the different types of designs and pigments preferred by various tribes, and their meanings are passed to them by their mothers. The tattooing ‘season’ begins with the approach of winter. (Photo by Ronny Sen/WaterAid/The Guardian)

A student from the union territory of Pondicherry prepares to take part in the inaugural session of the national Balrang Festival 2017 in Bhopal, India, 20 December 2017. More than 500 participants from 26 states across the country take part in the three-day long cultural event to showcase their performances. The festival organised by Madhya Pradesh School Education Department and Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangralaya. (Photo by Sanjeev Gupta/EPA/EFE)

Indian Air Force officers stretch before taking part in full dress rehearsal for India's Republic Day parade in Kolkata, January 23, 2018. (Photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)

A man carries his daughter, dressed as Kumari, on a scooter, as they arrive to attend rituals to celebrate the Navratri Festival, on a road outside the Adyapeath Temple, on the outskirts of Kolkata, India on March 25, 2018. (Photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)

An Indian priest covers his face with a mask as a precaution against coronavirus and prays at a temple, in Prayagraj, India, Monday, June 8, 2020. (Photo by Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP Photo)