Local cults and beliefs play a significant role throughout the world, although their configuration and relationship with the dominant religious denominations are very different. The social and cultural characteristics of each major historical and cultural region leave their imprints on the patterns of this interaction. In India, the plurality of religious denominations is closely combined with the complex social structure of society. About 8% of the country's population, according to the latest Census, professes religions such as animism and tribal religions other than Hinduism, Christianity or Islam. The religious traditions of some of the tribal peoples of India have now acquired their own names and are officially recognized as separate religions - Sanamahism, Sarnaism, Bathuism, Donyi Polo and others, and their followers separate themselves from representatives of other denominations. Such “new old” religions are prevalent primarily in the North-Eastern states of India, and also among some peoples and other areas classified as Scheduled Tribes with their own social structure, languages, folklore, beliefs and practices. These ethnic religions - first of all, the context of their formation and organizational activities, as well as the very fact of identification with them - are to a large extent politicized. Often there is a change and institutionalization of traditional religiosity, articulation and strengthening of ethnic identity. The number of such religions has been increasing recently, and they have already become a noticeable phenomenon in the social and political life of India. This paper will offer the ethnographic material, collected by the author during the expeditions since 2002, and will analyze creative rethinking of the legacy of the tribal past in India, its transformation and addition, “reformatting”, imagination, inclusion in a broad modern worldview context.