Punjab and odisha festivals

Festivals of Punjab
1. Jor Mela- Shaheedi Jor Mela - Every year in December, this marvellous celebration is
held to eloquently remember Fateh Singh and Zorawar Singh, the youngest sons of Guru
Gobind Singh who were martyred. People congregate at the magnificent Gurudwara
Fatehgarh Sahib each year to pay their homage and enthusiastically participate in the
events held there.

2. Baisakhi I The Khalsa Sirjana Diwas - Punjab observes crop harvesting during the
wonderful Baisakhi, also known as Vaisakhi, festival. April is the month when it is
observed since the first crop of the year is harvested. To commemorate this significant
occasion of the year, entire states express their vivacious sides and dance
enthusiastically. This auspicious celebration, also known as the Sikh New Year, is
extensively observed to commemorate the year 1699, when Sikhism was admirably born
as a collective state.
3. Teeyan I The Magical Sawan Teej - Teeyan is a Teej Festival of Punjab that is incredibly
celebrated to welcome Monsoons in a super fascinating manner. This festival is mainly
honoured by the women of Punjab, who dress up in exotic outfits, adorn themselves
with graceful jewellery and much more. They merrily cherish the occasion while
performing fantastic folk dances and riding the swings near the trees setting up a
vibrant vibe. The whole idea behind the glorious celebrations and such enthusiasm of
the women of Punjab is to depict how they can joyfully sacrifice their lives for the
longevity of their husbands.

4. Hola Mohalla | The Embodiment of courage and strength - This glorious event,
observed at Anandpur Sahib and Kiratpur Sahib, is celebrated with zeal and fervour. You
may see the Punjabi Gurudwara decorated respectably to evoke the festive spirit. This
event honoured the day that Guru Govind Singh created the Khalsa Panth. This entire
day is devoted to remembering the honourable deeds and inspirational life lessons
imparted by the great Sikh Gurus.

5. Gurpurab | The Devotional Sikh Holy Day - This evocative festival is indeed one of the
most famous festivals of Punjab, which wonderfully celebrates the birth anniversary of
the revered Sikh gurus. This festival also signifies the religiosity of Sikhs. The
celebrations begin with harmonious hymns and proceed with prayers and delicious
langar. Gurpurab is honoured with utmost zeal and passion by the Sikh community. You
can witness the heartwarming fiesta of this incredible festival in its truest form in
Punjab.

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 6. Lohri | The Enthusiastic Spirit Of Harvest Fest- The bonfires are lit during Lohri, which is
known as the longest winter night and is when people endure the heaviest fog, mist,
and freezing temperatures. This magnificent festival is celebrated to deeply admire and
remember Dulla Batti, who fiercely saved the Hindu girls being captured by the
Mughals. As the blaze is presented with practically every item that emits a great deal of
heat into the human body, this event is spectacular and exceptional. A full Punjabi spirit
is created by presenting the white sesame seeds, the sweet jaggery, and the energetic
dance around the bonfire.

7. Maghi | The Graceful Honour of the Martyrdom of Forty Sikhs - Also regarded as Makar
Sankranti, this ripping festival is honoured at Mukhtsar Sahib every year. The great Guru
Amar Das was the first one to observe this festival. This became a practice since then to
remember the martyred souls and celebrate their uplifting courage. Every year, on
Maghi, a delicious Kheer is prepared using Sugarcane juice and savoured by everyone.

Festivals of Odisha

1. Durga Pooja - Durga Pooja is the most important festival of Orissa which is
magnificently celebrated all over the state of Orrisa. It is celebrated in the month of
Ashwin or Kartik, (September or October as per the English calendar). The streets and
lighted up and Pandals are decorated to set the spirit of festivity among the people. The
huge idols of Durga Maa along with two other avatars of Maa Laxmi and Maa Saraswati
are immaculate in the Pandals. The chants of Mantras and morning and evening Artis
can be heard to mark the grand celebration of this festival. Durga Pooja is celebrated for
three – four days in Orissa and holds an important significance for the Hindu devotees.

2. Kalinga Mahotsav - The festival has an interesting story connected with its celebration.
A major part of Orrisa was earlier known as Kalinga, the land which is seen brutal
murders and death of martyrs during the reign of Ashoka. It is at this place that Ashoka
decided to live a peaceful and non- violent life. Kalinga Mahotsav is celebrated to mark
the victory of peace over war. To pay tribute to the martyrs of Mauryan dynasty various
Martial art acts are performed on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar at Dhauli Shanti Stupa.
The vibrant and brave performances of martial arts not only attracts the people of
Orissa but from all over the world.

3. Chandan Yatra - Also known as Gandhalepana Yatra, it is the longest festival of Orissa
which is celebrated at Jagannath temple at Puri. The 42-day long festival is celebrated by
worshiping the deities with sandal mixed water. The deities are taken out of the temple
for a holy patron in water in the traditional boats called ‘ Chapa’. The boats are
beautifully decorated generally in red and white colour to give the resemblance of a
swan floating in the water. The conclusion of the pompous festival is marked at the

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 Vishnu or Shiva temples in Puri. Thousand of pilgrimages gather to take part in the
celebration of this great festival of Orrisa.

4. Mahabisuva Sankranti - Mahabisuva Sankranti is celebrated to mark the new year as

5. Rath Yatra - Also known as Car Festival is dedicated to Lord Jagannath who is believed
to be an avatar of Lord Vishnu and Lord Krishna. The Rath or Chariot Yatra on this
festival represents the journey of Lord Krishna from Gokul to Mathura. The huge deities
of Krishna, Balaram and Subhadra are taken for a religious yatra on the chariots to the
summer temple for a week. The main chariot is 14 meters high and 10 meters square
with 16 wheels, construction of which is began two months prior to the festival. People
of Orissa actively participate in the Rath Yatra. The people have always been connected
to this traditional festival of Orrisa, so much that in the olden times, the devotees used
to jump to death in front of the Rath under the belief that dying under the Jagannath’s
chariot will send them to heaven.

6. Magha Saptmi - One of the most famous and most celebrated festivals of Konark
temple is Magha Saptmi. On this day thousands of people gather on the shore of Bay of
Bengal to offer their prayers to the sea. Devotees take a holy dip in the sea near
Chandrabhaga beach and welcome the rising Sun with prayers. This festival also marks
the beginning of grand fair at Khandagiri near Bhubaneswar which lasts for a week. The
shore of Bay and Bengal and the offerings made to the Sun temple add the feeling of
festivity among the people of Orissa.

7. Chhau Festival - To represent the tribal life and traditional dances of Orissa, Chhau
festival is celebrated with great enthusiasm in the whole of Orrisa. This festival is
primarily attached to the Odissi dance form- Mayurbhanj Chhau. During this festival,
people of Orissa worship Lord Shiva. The trained classical dancers perform the act of
Chhau with masks covering their faces. The dance form has various classical and martial
arts elements in it. Chhau festival offers a complete treat of dance performances, great
food and vibrant tribal life of Orrisa.

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History of Punjab
The foundations of the present Punjab were laid by Banda Singh Bahadur, a hermit who
became a military leader and, with his fighting band of Sikhs, temporarily liberated the
eastern part of the province from Mughal rule in 1709–10. Banda Singh’s defeat and
execution in 1716 were followed by a prolonged struggle between the Sikhs on one side
and the Mughals and Afghans on the other. By 1764–65 the Sikhs had established their
dominance in the area. Ranjit Singh (1780–1839) subsequently built up the Punjab
region into a powerful Sikh kingdom and attached to it the adjacent provinces
of Multan, Kashmir, and Peshawar.

In 1849 the Punjab kingdom fell to the troops of the British East India Company and
subsequently became a province under British rule. By the late 19th century, however,
the Indian nationalist movement took hold in the province. One of the most significant
events associated with the movement was the 1919 Massacre of Amritsar, which
resulted from an order given by the British general Reginald Edward Harry Dyer to fire
on a group of some 10,000 Indians who had convened to protest new antisubversion
regulations enacted by the British administration; according to one report, nearly 400
died and about 1,200 were injured in the conflict. When India gained its independence
in 1947, the British province of Punjab was split between the new sovereign states
of India and Pakistan, and the smaller, eastern portion became part of India.

After independence, the history of the Indian Punjab was dominated by Sikh agitation
for a separate Punjabi-speaking state, led by Tara Singh and later by his political
successor, Sant Fateh Singh. In November 1956, however, rather than being divided
along linguistic lines, the Indian state of Punjab was enlarged through incorporation of
the Patiala and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU), an amalgamation of the
preindependence princely territories of Patiala, Jind, Nabha, Faridkot, Kapurthala, Kalsia,
Malerkotla (Maler Kotla), and Nalagarh. Political and administrative leadership for the
enlarged Punjab was provided by Sardar Partap Singh Kairon, chief minister of the state
from 1956 to 1964. The call for a separate Indian state containing the predominantly
Punjabi-speaking areas intensified in the wake of Punjab’s expansion. Eventually, the
government of India met the demand. On November 1, 1966, Punjab was divided on the
basis of language into the mostly Hindi-speaking state of Haryana and the new, primarily
Punjabi-speaking state of Punjab; meanwhile, the northernmost districts were
transferred to Himachal Pradesh, and the newly constructed city of Chandigarh and its
immediate surroundings became a separate union territory. Though not a part of either
state, the city of Chandigarh was retained as the joint administrative headquarters, or
capital, of both Haryana and Punjab.

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Although Sikhs had won the use of Punjabi within the state, by the 1980s militant
factions of the Shiromani Akali Dal (Supreme Akali Party) and the All India Sikh Students’
Federation were demanding the establishment of an autonomous Sikh homeland,
or Khalistan (“Land of the Pure,” a term introduced as early as 1946 by Tara Singh). In
order to attain their goal, those groups began to use terrorism, including
the indiscriminate killing of Punjabi Hindus and even those Sikhs who opposed the
creation of Khalistan. In June 1984, in an effort to dislodge Sikh militants fortified in
the Harmandir Sahib, or Golden Temple (the Sikhs’ holiest shrine), the Indian army
carried out an attack. The Sikh leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and most of his armed
followers were killed, as were at least 100 Indian soldiers. In retaliation, Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated at her Delhi home by two of her Sikh
bodyguards, which in turn led to violence against Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere. A climate
of violence and disorder persisted in Punjab through the 1980s, but by the early 1990s
the state had returned to relative stability. The general peace there continued into the
early 21st century, helped by the naming of Manmohan Singh, a Sikh, as the prime
minister of India in 2004.

History of Odisha

Since its earliest known history, the land that roughly corresponds to present-day
Odisha has gone by various names, most notably Utkala (or Okkala), Kalinga, and Odra
Desha (or Oddaka), which appeared in ancient literature as designations for particular
tribes. The ancient Greeks knew the latter two groups as Kalingai and Oretes. Those
names eventually became identified with specific territories.

At the dawn of Indian history, Kalinga was already a famous and formidable political
power. Buddhist sources refer to the rule of King Brahmadatta in Kalinga at the time of
the Buddha’s death, sometime between the 6th and the 4th century BCE. In the 4th
century BCE the first Indian empire builder, Mahapadma Nanda, founder of the Nanda
dynasty, conquered Kalinga, but the Nanda rule was short-lived. In
260 BCE the Mauryan emperor Ashoka invaded Kalinga and fought one of the greatest
wars of ancient history. He then renounced war, became a Buddhist, and preached
peace and nonviolence in and outside India. In the 1st century BCE the Kalinga emperor
Kharavela conquered vast territories that collectively came to be called the Kalinga
empire.

Kalinga enjoyed a golden age under the Ganga dynasty. The Ganga ruler Anantavarman
Chodagangadeva (1078–1147) ruled from the Ganges River to the Godavari
River with Cuttack as his capital. He began the construction of the temple
of Jagannatha (“Lord of the World”) at Puri. Narasimha I (1238–64) built the Sun Temple

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(Surya Deula) of Konark, one of the finest specimens of Hindu architecture. In the 13th
and 14th centuries, when much of India came under the rule of Muslim powers,
independent Kalinga remained a citadel of Hindu religion, philosophy, art, and
architecture.

The Gangas were succeeded by the Surya dynasty. Its first king, Kapilendra (1435–66),
won territories from his Muslim neighbours and greatly expanded the Kalinga kingdom.
His successor, Purushottama, maintained those gains with difficulty. The next and the
last Surya king, Prataparudra, became a disciple of Chaitanya, the great Hindu mystic,
and became a pacifist. After Prataparudra’s death in 1540, the kingdom’s power
declined, and in 1568, when King Mukunda was killed by his own countrymen, it lost its
independence to the Afghan rulers of Bengal.
It was sometime between the 11th and 16th centuries that the name Kalinga fell into
disuse. In its place arose the old tribal name Odra Desha, which was gradually
transformed into Odisha (or Uddisha, or Udisa), which in English became Orissa; that
spelling persisted until the original Odisha was reinstated in the early 21st century. The
language of the region came to be known as Odia.

The Mughal emperor Akbar wrested Odisha from the Afghans in 1590–92. When the
Mughal Empire fell in the mid-18th century, part of Odisha remained under the nawabs
(provincial governors of Mughal India) of Bengal, but the greater part passed to
the Marathas, who ruled much of South India between the 16th and 19th centuries. The
Bengal sector came under British rule in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey (near present-
day Palashi), and the Maratha sector was conquered by the British in 1803. Although
after 1803 the British controlled the entire Odia-speaking area, it continued to be
administered as two units. It was not until April 1, 1936, that the British heeded calls for
unification on a linguistic basis and constituted Orissa as a separate province. However,
26 Odia princely states remained outside the provincial administration. After the
independence of India in 1947, the territory of Orissa was expanded to include all the
princely states except Saraikela and Kharsawan, which were absorbed by Bihar. Orissa
became a state of India in 1950.