{"id":22176,"date":"2020-08-28T14:30:15","date_gmt":"2020-08-28T05:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2020\/aug\/28\/covid-19-turns-tide-on-indias-ganesh-festival-traditions"},"modified":"2020-08-28T14:30:15","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T05:30:15","slug":"covid-turns-tide-on-indias-ganesh-festival-traditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=22176","title":{"rendered":"Covid turns tide on India&#8217;s Ganesh festival traditions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thousands of ritual statues are dunked into the sea off Mumbai each year \u2013 but coronavirus and pollution concerns are forcing change <\/p>\n<p>In the quiet housing estate of Angrewadi in the heart of Girgaon in south Mumbai, people are celebrating the 100th consecutive year of the Ganesh Chaturthi, the Hindu festival of the elephant-headed god of new beginnings. Statues of Lord Ganesh are brought into homes and put on display for offerings and prayers.<\/p>\n<p>On the 11th and final day of the festival, the ritual of Ganesh Visarjan takes place \u2013 falling this year on 1 September. The statues, normally made of soluble plaster of paris, are traditionally carried in a public procession with music and chanting, and are then immersed in either a river or the sea. Here, they slowly dissolve in a ceremony that dramatises the Hindu view of the ephemeral nature of life \u2013 but also causes widespread pollution.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2020\/aug\/28\/covid-19-turns-tide-on-indias-ganesh-festival-traditions\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thousands of ritual statues are dunked into the sea off Mumbai each year \u2013 but coronavirus and pollution concerns are forcing change In the quiet housing estate of Angrewadi in the heart of Girgaon in south Mumbai, people are celebrating the 100th cons&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1069,65,462,59,516,62,468,454,467,466,371,79,61,463],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coronavirus-outbreak","category-environment","category-environmental-sustainability","category-global-development","category-hinduism","category-india","category-marine-life","category-mumbai","category-oceans","category-pollution","category-religion","category-society","category-south-and-central-asia","category-sustainable-development"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22177,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22176\/revisions\/22177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}