Ganesh Utsav Festival: Indian Community Holds Celebration In Yangon

Ganesh Utsav Festival was celebrated on Saturday evening in the Gandamar Wholesale compound in Yangon.

The festival is to seek the blessings of the elephant-headed god. It’s also one of the best known processions for Hindus living in Myanmar. India’s Ambassador to Myanmar and many other representatives of Indian government attended the festival – the festival attracted more than 200 people. 

Ambassador, India Embassy, H.E. Saurabh Kumar said "...Ganesh Festival is very important. Ganesh is... He symbolize as intellect, he is a person who helps you overcome the obstacles you face in life. So for Indian, he is very important and particularly in this (day of Maharashtra) this festival is celebrated with a lot of enthusiasm. India- Myanmar, we have very strong culture bonds and we keep undertaking cultural performances in Myanmar to further strengthen our bonds of friendship. So we will be very happy if more Myanmar friends participate."

The Ganesh Festival has been held by Team “Morya,” a group of Indian families, since 2015 in Myanmar. They celebrate the festival with the aim of promoting the Indian culture and also to connect the Indian and Myanmar people culturally.

Chief  Executive Officer, Neoped Healthcare Co., Ltd., Dashrath Barbole said "... Today is the cultural event. Various people, kids around 63 participants will be performing here on the team Nari. Nari means women. As you know in our religion women is respected a lot. But somehow, some of the social factors, there are some concerns about gender equality. So we want to promote female gender, like they are important in our life.” “And we want that people of Myanmar, next time, may be next year, probably we can do jointly with the people of Myanmar”.

Each year, many cultural activities with different concepts are included in the Ganesh festival. This year, the festival focuses on the concept of gender equality especially women.

Participant, Raashi Mitra said "... We're gonna do an Indian dance on the team Nari. So we choreograph this dance for around two months and today is the big day... Nari about girls, about how we have been treated from generation to generations like that... I'm really excited. Because we're all gonna perform for long time. This is our hard work from two months. And it's gonna get over in two minutes. That's a bad thing. But actually we are excited...."

Young participants performed the cultural show portraying the role of women and their contribution.