Lost Indian Festivals
India is a land of festivals. A wide variety and range of festivals are celebrated in India by different religions, states and castes (Arora, 1986). The larger festivals that are elaborately celebrated are documented and popularised by the media. However, a number of smaller festivals celebrated are being forgotten. Through this project, these lesser-known Indian festivals are documented.
Books have mentioned that multiple Indian festivals were celebrated every week leading to over hundreds of festivals (Bajaj, 2021). Traditionally different festivals were celebrated by the four different castes. Festivals were also celebrated differently in different states. Given the vast diversity and number of festivals, I decided to pick festivals celebrated by the Vaishya caste (from Uttar Pradesh). As I belong to this community, I was able to refer books and learn knowledge of these festivals through family.
Thirty-three festivals were identified (see Fig 1) along with their significance. For the scope of this project, possible approaches to narrow down the number of festivals were considered, such as -
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Four Historically significant,
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Most popular,
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Lost (least known),
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Season based,
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Celebrated by women
Fig 1. Possible approaches to select festivals
Selection of Festivals
Finally, five lesser-known festivals celebrated by only women were selected for the information visualisation. The festivals selected were - Sakat Chauth, Gan Gaur Pooja, Sati ki Amavasya, Karwa Chauth and Ahoi Ashtami.
The context for this project was to visualise the information of the selected five festivals such that they can be easily understood and practised by the upcoming generation of young Indians.
The practical information required to practise these festivals in today’s context would be communicated.