Lathmar Holi is primarily celebrated in the state of:

Correct — D. Lathmar Holi is played at Barsana and Nandgaon, two villages in the Mathura district of Uttar Pradesh, in the days before the main Holi.

The name is literal. Men come from Nandgaon, the women of Barsana drive them off with lathis (sticks), and the men take the blows on shields instead of striking back. The custom belongs to the Radha-Krishna tradition of the Braj region, which places it in western Uttar Pradesh and nowhere else on this list.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Karnataka — Karnataka lies outside the Braj cultural region altogether. Holi is observed there, but the stick-play between two named villages is a Mathura-district custom with no Karnataka counterpart.
• (b)
  Himachal Pradesh — Himachal Pradesh is associated with the Kullu Dussehra and the Minjar fair of Chamba. Its Holi observances involve no lathi-play between two villages.
• (c)
  Arunachal Pradesh — Arunachal Pradesh celebrates festivals such as Losar and Nyokum, tribal and agricultural in origin. Lathmar Holi has no presence in the north-east.

Lathmar Holi belongs to Braj, the cultural region around Mathura and Vrindavan associated with Krishna.

The play-acting runs between two villages: Nandgaon, taken as Krishna's village, and Barsana, taken as Radha's. That pairing is the whole festival — the visit, the sticks, the shields.

It falls before the main Holi, so the Braj calendar runs a few days ahead of the rest of the country's.

Key facts

• Lathmar Holi is celebrated at Barsana and Nandgaon in Mathura district, Uttar Pradesh.
• The custom belongs to the Braj region's Radha-Krishna tradition.
• It is held in the days before the main Holi rather than on Holi itself.

Common traps

• Reading 'Lathmar' as a tribal or hill-state festival name and marking a Himalayan state.
• Knowing it is a Krishna custom but placing it in Gujarat or Rajasthan instead of the Braj tract of Uttar Pradesh.

No directly related past PYQ was found.