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Feature: Thousands of Hindus gather in pavilions as Durga festival peaks with Kumari Puja

Xinhua, October 22, 2015 Adjust font size:

Durga Puja, the biggest annual Hindu festival, peaked in Bangladesh's capital Dhaka and elsewhere in the country on the occasion of Kumari Puja (the ritual of celebrating young girls as the mother goddess) on Wednesday with thousands of devotees coming out to enjoy the grand occasion.

The Hindu community's biggest Durga religious festival began on Monday across Bangladesh.

During the five-day Durga Puja festival, the Goddess Durga is worshipped in her different forms and one of those is Kumari, the virgin form of the deity.

Hindu scripture allows girls aged between one year old and sixteen to be a model of the goddess Durga during Mohashtami, the third day of the five-day Durga Puja festival of the Bangalee Hindu community.

As on occasions a pre-pubescent girl was seen to be worshipped as a "Mother Goddess" on Wednesday. Thousands of Hindu devotees amassed at the Ramkrishna temple in Dhaka on Wednesday morning to receive blessings from the girl adorned as the living embodiment of the goddess Durga.

This year at the Ramkrishna temple, a six-year-old girl was adorned with new clothes, and decorated with flower garlands, ornaments and makeup before being presented before devotees as the living embodiment of the goddess Durga.

"Our scriptures have attached utmost importance to Kumari Puja to evolve the purity and divinity of the women," said Debashish Roy, a Hindu devotee.

"I have come with my family members to receive a blessing from the Kumari."

Puja pavilions and the approach roads to these venues in and around the city were illuminated with lights. The thematic designs and dazzling lighting of the mandaps (festival pavilions) also attract some Muslims who also join their Hindu friends.

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited a couple of Durga Puja pavilions in Dhaka on Tuesday.

Though the mandaps have been teeming with visitors since Wednesday morning, the crowds swelled markedly towards the evening, with the venues witnessing a sea of people on the approaching roads and streets, a part of which had been occupied by makeshift stalls selling toys, sweets and fast food.

This year the Durga Puja is being celebrated at at more than 29,000 pavilions in Bangladesh including 222 in Dhaka.

Security arrangements across Bangladesh have been beefed up for peaceful celebrations of the festival of Hindus, which will end with the immersion of the idols on Oct 23. Enditem