Festival You Will Remember: Ganga Dussehra

India is a land of festivals. Varieties of different festivals are celebrated here round the year. Ganga Dussehra is one of the many festivals celebrated here. It is also known as Gangavataran. It is a Hindu festival which celebrates the avatarana (descent) of the Ganges.

Hindus believe that the holy river Ganges descends from the heaven to earth on this particular day. Ganga Dussehra takes place on Dashami (10th day) of the waxing moon (Shukla Paksha) of the Hindu calendar month Jyeshtha. The festival celebration takes place for nearly ten days, the nine days being those preceding this holy day. This festival is fondly celebrated in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, and West Bengal, where river Ganga flows. Haridwar, Varanasi, Garhmukteshwar, Rishikesh, Allahabad, and Patna are the major locations where the celebrations take place.The devotees gather at the banks of the Ganges and take part in the aarti. It is a religious ritual in which a light lamp is moved clockwise circularly in front of a deity as a part of prayer to the river. The devotees take a dip in the river on this day. It is believed to bring the devotees to a state of purification and also heal any physical ailments he may have. In Sanskrit, dasha means ten and hara means destroy; thus bathing in the river during these ten days is believed to rid the person of ten sins or, alternatively, ten lifetimes of sins. On this auspicious day, the river Yamuna also known as jamuna is also worshipped and various events like kite-flying are organized around the shores. Devotees taking part in the festival usually take a holy dip in the holy river at various places like Vrindavan, Mathura and Bateshwar and have a custom of giving offerings of watermelon and cucumber in the river. They distribute drinks such as sharbat, lassi and shikanji to the devotees. In the fair of 2017, around 15 lakh people took part in the celebrations of the festival at Haridwar. At the shores of Dashashwamedh Ghat in Varanasi, various rituals are done such as deep daan (hereby means offering of floating diyas at the river) and followed by maha aarti are conducted. In Patna, a grand aarti is performed in the evening by priests at Gandhi Ghat and an 1100m garland is offered to the river at Adalat Ghat.

By: Anuja Arora

Content: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganga_Dussehra