Ratha Yatra in Rome, 2022

Ratha Yatra. Piazza del Popolo. Rome, 28 May, 2022

Finally, among the various festivals to which it is possible to return to participate, after the years of limitations related to the pandemic, there is the annual Hindu festival of the Chariot: the Ratha Yatra.

The last time I saw it was in 2018, and also this year it returned to the historic location of Piazza del Popolo, with the parade on Via del Corso, in the heart of Roman shopping: a perfect fusion of the sacred and the profane, where the sacred is also represented – in a fantastic glance – by the synchrony of Hindu divinities and painted madonnas, crosses, and profiles of centenary churches.

 

Before starting the parade, all the Hindu faithful, the Hare Krishna (many Italians), and a lot of curious people, gathered in Piazza del Popolo, for songs and dances. Then the great Chariot – Ratha Yatra derives from two Sanskrit words, Ratha, which means chariot or carriage, and Yatra which means journey or pilgrimage, while in other Indian languages such as Odia, phonetic equivalents are used, such as jatra – it began its public procession along Via del Corso, which seemed to explode in containing the colorful and joyful mass of the faithful.

The big wooden chariot with the deities Jagannath (avatar of Vishnu), Balabhadra (his brother), Subhadra (his sister) and Sudarshana Chakra (his weapon), is pulled by the ropes by the faithful creating an internal space in which they dance and sing, while the spectators remain outside the two side wings.

It was thanks to the Hare Krishna movement that the festival began to be common in major cities around the world, since 1968.

Ratha Yatra is very famous in Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal and other eastern Indian states, most notably the Odia festival.

Although Ratha Yatra has religious origins and significance, the festival has become an important community heritage, of social sharing and cultural significance for the organizers and attendees.

During the Jagannath Rath Yatra, the triads are usually worshiped in the shrine of the Puri temple, but once during the month of Asadha (the rainy season of Odissa, which usually falls in June or July), they are brought to the main road Bada Danda in a path of 3 km up to the Shri Gundicha Temple, allowing the public to have the darśana (Sacred Sight). The chariot for Jagannath is approximately 45 feet 35 square feet tall and takes approximately 2 months to build. Puri artists and painters decorate the chariots and paint flower petals and other designs on the wheels, the charioteer and horses carved in wood, and the upside-down lotus flowers on the wall behind the throne.

Finally, all this can be seen and experienced again also in the central streets of Rome, in a triumph of colors and sharing.

Italian version