Chhath Puja

Chhath Puja is a festival of Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and the neighbouring Terai of Nepal, devoted to the Sun god Surya and to Chhathi Maiya, and it is among the most physically demanding of Hindu observances. Kept over four days in the bright fortnight of Kartika (October-November), it centres on strict rites of purity and a fast that for the principal devotee (the vrati, often a woman) extends to a waterless fast of some thirty-six hours. Its most striking act is the offering made while standing in a river, pond or tank, waist-deep in the water, at sunset and again at sunrise, when the devotees raise offerings of fruit and the wheat sweet thekua to the sun.

The festival is notable for having no priest and no idol: the worshippers address the sun directly, making it one of the most participatory and least mediated of Hindu observances. It gives thanks to the sun as the source of life and health and prays for the wellbeing and prosperity of the family. Deeply rooted in the folk religion of the region rather than in the classical temple tradition, Chhath has spread with Bihari migration across India and the diaspora, and its riverbank gatherings at dawn are among the most distinctive religious sights of the eastern Gangetic plain.

Chhath Puja's requirement that devotees stand in natural water at sunset and sunrise has become a genuine practical and environmental challenge in large Indian cities where rivers are heavily polluted, most visibly the Yamuna in Delhi, where the river's water quality around the festival period has repeatedly drawn public health warnings and media attention, since large numbers of devotees, including the fasting vrati observing the most demanding rites of the festival, wade into water that testing has shown to be contaminated with industrial and sewage pollutants.

City governments in Delhi, Mumbai, Patna and elsewhere have responded by constructing temporary artificial ghats, cleaner tanks and dedicated riverside sites specifically for Chhath, along with deploying additional sanitation, lighting and medical support for the dawn and dusk gatherings, a significant annual logistical undertaking that has turned the accommodation of a folk religious practice into a recurring test of urban water management and public health planning in cities whose natural water bodies were not maintained with this use in mind.

Chhath has also travelled with the Bihari and Purvanchali diaspora far beyond India: communities in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Gulf states now construct their own temporary ghats, often beside a lake, reservoir or even a swimming pool where no natural river is available, so that migrants can keep the specific requirement of standing offerings in open water even in cities and climates far removed from the Gangetic plain the festival originates in.