Before anyone misunderstands me: I am not suggesting that we stop celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi.
I am questioning something very specific—the modern Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav: the enormous public pandals, massive collections, VIP darshans, DJs, celebrity appearances, traffic chaos and ever-growing competition over who can make the biggest spectacle.
Perhaps it is time to let this particular experiment end.
Why do we celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi?
Ganesh Chaturthi is an old Hindu festival observed on the fourth day of the bright fortnight of Bhadrapada, usually in August or September. The traditional celebration is straightforward: install Ganesha, perform puja, offer naivedya, pray, celebrate with family and community, and eventually perform visarjan.
The public, mass version of the festival is much newer.
Why was Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav created?
The modern public Ganesh festival emerged in Maharashtra in the 1890s, particularly through the efforts of Bal Gangadhar Tilak. There was a reason for this.
Under British rule, political gatherings were subject to restrictions. Religious gatherings occupied a different space. Ganeshotsav provided a socially and legally acceptable way for large numbers of Indians to gather, listen to speeches, discuss public issues and develop a sense of collective identity.
In other words, religious ritual became a vehicle for public mobilisation.
It was an ingenious idea. But the British are gone. We no longer need a religious festival as a workaround for colonial restrictions on public assembly.
Yet the institution created for that historical purpose has continued to grow. And what has it become?
From worship to spectacle
The small neighbourhood Ganapati is one thing. The modern mega-Ganapati is something else entirely.
There is vargani—sometimes voluntary, sometimes accompanied by considerable social pressure. There are enormous sponsorships, elaborate pandals, expensive decorations and questions about how the money is collected and spent.
Then there are the DJs. A festival centred on prayer, aarti and devotion can turn into several nights of deafening music. Noise complaints and court interventions have become a recurring feature of major urban festivals.
And then there is the drinking, partying and general behaviour around some celebrations that has remarkably little to do with the deity being worshipped.
At some point, we have to ask: When did the spectacle become more important than the worship?
And then came scale
Look at what the largest Ganesh festivals have become.
Lalbaugcha Raja. GSB Ganapati.
Millions of devotees, enormous crowds, crores in donations, kilograms of gold and silver, celebrities, politicians, elaborate security arrangements and roads transformed to accommodate the crowds.
The GSB Ganapati in Mumbai is insured for hundreds of crores because of the enormous quantity of gold and silver associated with the festival.
Lalbaugcha Raja attracts crowds so large that the city has to re-organise itself around them.
And then comes the irony.
A festival originally intended to bring ordinary people together can develop VIP queues, preferential access and celebrity treatment.
The common devotee waits. The celebrity walks in. The politician gets special access. The ordinary person gets a barricade and a queue.
And we still call it sarvajanik—public.
The city pays for the spectacle
There is also a question we rarely ask.
How much of a city's public infrastructure should be re-organised around a religious festival?
Roads are closed. Traffic is diverted. Police are deployed in huge numbers. Public spaces are occupied.
Immersion processions disrupt entire neighbourhoods.
For a small community celebration, the civic cost is negligible. For a festival involving hundreds of thousands or millions of people, it isn't.
And while public festivals are certainly part of urban life, there must surely be a point at which the freedom to celebrate collides with everyone else's right to go about their lives.
Perhaps it is time to let it come home
None of this is an argument against Ganesh Chaturthi.
If anything, I would argue for more Ganesh Chaturthi and less Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav.
Celebrate at home. Invite your neighbours. Perform the puja. Sing bhajans. Make modaks.
Take children to the temple. Feed people. Do some seva. Donate to something worthwhile.
And then immerse the murti. Quietly and peacefully.
We don't need a 30-foot idol. We don't need a celebrity. We don't need a politician. We don't need a DJ truck.
We don't need to shut down half the neighbourhood.
Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav was a clever response to a particular historical problem: how to create public solidarity under colonial rule.
That problem no longer exists.
What began as ritual being used to overcome political restrictions has, in many places, become an annual exercise in spectacle, money, noise, VIP culture and civic disruption.
Perhaps after more than a century, we should be willing to say:
The British are gone.
The experiment has served its purpose.
Maybe it is time for Ganapati to come home.
No comments:
Post a Comment