In which of the following states is the Chu-Faat dance performed?

Correct — B. Chu-Faat is a dance of the Lepcha community, and the Lepchas are the community the question is pointing at in Sikkim.

It is danced in honour of Khangchendzonga, the peak Sikkim treats as its guardian deity: dancers carry butter lamps and sheaves of green bamboo while devotional songs are sung. The offering is to the mountain, not to a temple image.

Read the dance back to its community, and the community to its state, and you land on option (b).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  West Bengal — West Bengal shares the Himalayan foothills with Sikkim, which makes it the closest wrong answer here — but Chu-Faat is carried as the Lepcha tradition of Sikkim, whose guardian peak it addresses.
• (c)
  Uttarakhand — Uttarakhand is Himalayan too, but it has no Lepcha population, and its own folk repertoire runs to forms such as the Kumaoni sword dance Chholiya.
• (d)
  Haryana — Haryana is a plains state with no tradition of peak worship. A dance addressed to Khangchendzonga could not have originated there.

Folk dances are keyed to a community first and to a state second.

Chu-Faat belongs to the Lepchas, the earliest-settled community of Sikkim, and its subject is Khangchendzonga (also spelt Kangchenjunga) — the world's third-highest peak, standing on the Sikkim-Nepal border and worshipped as the state's protector.

Sikkim's Bhutia and Nepali communities have their own forms, so a 'which state' question on a Sikkimese dance can be resolved through the community that performs it.

Key facts

• Chu-Faat is performed by the Lepcha community of Sikkim.
• The dance honours Mount Khangchendzonga, worshipped as Sikkim's guardian deity.
• Khangchendzonga is the world's third-highest mountain and lies on the Sikkim-Nepal border.
• Dancers carry butter lamps and sheaves of green bamboo.

Common traps

• Answering West Bengal because Darjeeling feels like the same cultural belt.
• Mixing up Chu-Faat with the masked dances performed in Sikkim's Buddhist monasteries.

No directly related past PYQ was found.