In India, the celebrations of fairs and
festivals form a wondrous and joyful series of events, marking the rites of
passage between birth, death and renewal. There are said to be more festivals
in India than there are days of the year; not unlikely in a country where
small, local village rituals of worship and propitiation are celebrated with as
much as fervor as are high holy days across the nation, occasions that can draw
floods of people numbering half a million or more. Fairs and festivals are
moments of remembrance and commemoration of the birthdays and great deeds of
gods, goddesses, hero's, heroine's, gurus, prophet's and saints. They are times
when people gather together, linked by ties of shared social and religious
beliefs. Each of India's many religious groups - Hindus, Muslims, Christians,
Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and others - has its own such days.
In India, the celebrations of fairs and festivals form a
wondrous and joyful series of events, marking the rites of passage between
birth, death and renewal. There are said to be more festivals in India than
there are days of the year; not unlikely in a country where small, local
village rituals of worship and propitiation are celebrated with as much as
fervor as are high holy days across the nation, occasions that can draw floods
of people numbering half a million or more. Fairs and festivals are moments of
remembrance and commemoration of the birthdays and great deeds of gods,
goddesses, hero's, heroine's, gurus, prophet's and saints. They are times when
people gather together, linked by ties of shared social and religious beliefs.
Each of India's many religious groups - Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs,
Buddhists, Jains and others - has its own such days.
|