Navaratri

Navaratri, "nine nights", is a major Hindu festival devoted to the Divine Mother, the goddess in her many forms, culminating on a tenth day of victory. Several Navaratris fall through the year, but the most widely kept is the autumn Sharada Navaratri in the month of Ashvin (September-October). Its central narrative is the Goddess's battle with and destruction of the buffalo demon Mahishasura, told in the Devi Mahatmya, a text that presents her not as a consort but as the supreme power (shakti) who accomplishes what the male gods cannot; the festival is thus, in its theology, an assertion of the feminine as the ultimate divine energy.

A common scheme divides the nine nights among three great goddesses in turn, Durga the warrior, Lakshmi of abundance, and Saraswati of learning, each worshipped for three nights, so that the whole festival moves from the conquest of evil through prosperity to wisdom. Devotees fast, keep vigils, and worship successive aspects of the Goddess, and in many homes an image or pot (ghata) is installed for the duration. The festival's tenth day, Vijayadashami or Dussehra, marks the final victory and is treated in its own entry.

Navaratri is celebrated in strikingly different regional forms, so that it is less one festival than a family of them sharing a season and a theme. In Gujarat the nights are given to the circling dances garba and dandiya-raas, performed around an image or lamp of the Goddess, now vast public events; in the Bengali, Assamese and Odia east it builds toward Durga Puja, the grand worship of Durga in elaborate temporary pavilions (treated separately); in the Tamil and southern regions homes display the Golu, tiered arrangements of dolls and figures of gods, and women exchange visits and gifts.

In much of the north the nine nights accompany the Ramlila, the dramatic re-enactment of the story of Rama, so that the tenth day's victory is read as Rama's defeat of the demon-king Ravana rather than Durga's of Mahishasura; both readings coexist, and the festival easily holds them together. Fasting practices, foods and the intensity of public celebration vary widely by region and community. What unites them is the worship of the Goddess across nine nights and the celebration, on the tenth day, of the triumph of good over evil, a structure flexible enough to carry very different local traditions.