Religious Ethnic Festivals: The Case of Nuakhai Festival
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Abstract
A Festival is celebrated by a community in lieu of their community, cultural and religious beliefs that builds a bond between all them. More of religion and folklore based, the ethnic festivals are more of agricultural in nature that we observe during the harvest time. In western cultures, Religious commemoration such as Halloween and Easter are celebrated for thanksgiving for the good amount of harvests in the season to the nature and almighty. Sharing same belief, in the western parts of Odisha, and in some parts of the Jharkhand state, a unique agriculture based festival known as the Nuakhai is observed to welcome and newly grown rice crop of the season. The belief underlying the celebration of this festival is to respect the nature as mother so that in she will bless us with bountiful crops for all time to come. Along with the divinity towards the Mother Nature, this festival also shows respect for elders in the family, village deities, promotes unity and friendship in the society. This paper examines the criticality of the festival, its origin, journey from past to present, rituals as well as the potential to attract the tourists towards the region.