Angst of upcoming festivals

by admin | Aug 22, 2025 | celebrations, culture, events and festivals, festivals, social issues

August 19, Nepal – In 2018, Rishikesh Pandey released a compelling study in Quest titled “Religion, Rainfall and Rice: A Social and Ecological Analysis of Festivals in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.” Among his key discoveries was that the Newar community in Kathmandu faces challenges maintaining their age-old traditions because of factors such as “transformations in the agricultural ecosystem.” How can they perform prayers and offerings in their rice paddies anymore, with these areas now replaced by sprawling urban structures? I think it’s time for us to reconsider how we celebrate major national events like Dashain. My view is that although our festivals should remain intact, their observances and customs require updating—due to both financial and societal considerations.

Excitement under the clouds

The monsoon is still in full swing. Many people continue to live in the mortal fear of terrible landslides and flash floods. And yet, the festive season has begun in earnest.

Most of our festivities fall in autumn. They are much more enjoyable once the monsoon rains have stopped, seasonal flowers blossom and the paddy fields turn golden with the ripening crop. This year’s Dashain, which is about a month and half away, is going to be wet and muddy.

Notwithstanding, everyone is looking forward to the start of the great festivals. Many people living and working abroad are already planning to return to their country for Dashain. Town residents are planning to visit their ancestral homes, which are rapidly emptying. No doubt, festivals are a great source of personal happiness and social connection. Yet they are also a source of angst for many.

Too costly

Our celebrations are impressive in various aspects, yet they often become excessively costly. Many expenditures arise due to the frequent occurrence of numerous festivals. Next week marks Teej, and certain women may try their best to purchase new saris, ideally accompanied by pricey golden jewelry.

Dashain presents an even greater concern, featuring numerous days filled with lavish meals, travel, new clothing, and jewelry. Likewise, many individuals offer goats and chickens as sacrifices to well-known gods. How can those who earn a modest salary through honest labor afford these costs?

The festival of Tihar follows Dashain almost immediately, which tends to be quite expensive too. A similar situation exists in Tarai, with Chhath right after Dashain. The Newars too have many festivals of their own, each involving lots of expenses.

Drain on foreign income

I think these successive festivals around the harvest season were crucial to bring agrarian communities together in the past. Almost every house grew its own crop and livestock hence, the expenses weren’t such an issue. They probably didn’t think about buying expensive jewellery and foreign clothes at the time.

Continuing the practice of long feasts and social events, along with displaying wealth through gold, silver, clothing, or even costly vehicles and residences, appears difficult. This is particularly true in modern capitalist societies, where farming communities are quickly diminishing, leaving large areas of farmland unused and many rural populations declining.

These traditional types of festive celebrations in an era of market economy have been a huge drain on the remittance economy. Our economy is surviving because hundreds of thousands of our young men and women toil in Malaysia, Arab countries, Korea, Japan and send money home. Much of that money remitted from abroad goes into family expenses, mainly in celebrating increasingly expensive festivals.

What this has done is prevent the productive use of the remittance. It would be much better for the concerned families, to the local and national economy, if much of the remittance was invested in small businesses, in innovative projects. That would also provide employment opportunities and, in the longer term, increase the rate of pay within our own country-requiring less citizens to go for unskilled labour overseas.

Promoting social inequality

Our religious festivals seem out of place or outdated in the performance of at least some of their rituals and customs. As a result, the festivals have not only hurt the national economy, but also social harmony. Isn’t it time to rethink the rituals that openly promote social inequality?

I ponder why we continue to observe Janai Purnima, for example. It definitely does not warrant being a public holiday. This is because it is a highly polarizing celebration. The so-called higher or purer castes replace their sacred thread—janai—on this day. Meanwhile, the rest of us, including Dalits, indigenous communities, and women, are denied the opportunity to partake in the same thread or ceremony.

The concept of sacred thread has been used since the Puranic period to distinguish the higher castes from the lower ones. So, it deserves to be either wiped off our annual calendar for good-or reformed massively.

Numerous other celebrations, such as the Grand Dashain, clearly reinforce and support the traditional concept of ceremonial cleanliness and impurity. The spiritual idea of ritual purity and contamination (thoroughly examined by Luis Dumont in his renowned work “Homohierarchicus”) serves as the fundamental belief system underlying social stratification and prejudice. We have permitted places of worship to engage in this practice without restraint.

During the nine-day period of pre-Tika pujas, Damai drummers perform their musical rituals at nearly every temple dedicated to goddesses and old fortresses. However, they are not allowed inside the temple to offer prayers like other worshippers, and instead receive tika placed on a leaf. Even more distressing, they face additional humiliation by being given the leftover parts of sacrificial animals such as goats and bulls.

The same thing happens in state-sponsored and historic temples such as Gorakh Kali and Nuwakot Bhagawati and Palanchowk Bhagawati. Why are we allowing such practices to continue even in a secular republic? We’ve dumped Hindu monarchy for good-it’s also time to dump old and divisive rituals and customs.

To conclude, rain or shine-let’s celebrate our festivals. One doesn’t even need to be a Hindu to enjoy them, to have fun, to reconnect with our social circles. However, let’s also start a serious debate about reforming the ancient methods of celebrating our festivals-keeping in mind economic and social concerns. So that festivals bring more fun and less angst amongst the masses.