10 Day Ganpati festival not just a Hindu celebration:
By Harish Menon, Mumbai: As this mega-city ushered in this year’s Ganpati festival Wednesday, not just Hindus but also Muslims, Christians, Parsis and other religious groups were preparing to join in the 10-day revelry.
With thousands of small and big idols of Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, being installed in almost every nook and corner of the city, various communities joined hands to participate and make the event a success.
It was a Christian, Wilson Brooks, who founded the Shri Sarvajanik Ganesh Mitra Mandal of the King’s Circle area in central Mumbai, one of the 10,000 such in the city. A Muslim, Salim Sheikh, now heads it.
This 24-year-old mandal has 12 members, of whom five are non-Hindus.
“There is nothing in our festival that says non-Hindus cannot participate. In fact, Muslims make generous contributions to our mandal,” said Machindra Nath Dighe, vice president of the 72-year-old Lalbaug Sarvajanik Utsava Mandal, one of the biggest and richest in the city.
Rayomand Batliwala, 23, a Parsi, has been celebrating the festival at his home since he was seven years old. After he showed keen interest in the festival, his family too joined although they had initial reservations.
“It is a blessing to have Lord Ganesha at my home. I strictly perform all the pujas and shlokas (rituals and chants) every year,” Batliwala said.
Batliwala, who lives with his family of six in a Dadar apartment in central Mumbai, even knows all the shlokas by heart, which he learnt both by practice and by listening to friends and neighbours.
“I love the Marathi devotional songs of Ganpati. Though initially my family had problems, they later on became very encouraging and now they too take part in the festival,” he told IANS.
Batliwala’s uncle Dinyar Batlivala considers it an honour to be celebrating the festival.
“It is our great nation’s tradition in which all communities come together during such celebrations,” Dinyar said.
Religion is never a criterion for the more than 30 lifeguards of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), including Christians and Muslims, who keep an eye on the idol-immersion ritual on the 10th day of the Ganpati festival.
The YMCA has been involved with immersion services since 1996, when a few members received certificates from the Louisville YMCA in the US.