Not all migrants travel back home to celebrate the biggest festival of Bihar - Chhath. Countless celebrations dot major cities like Delhi where lakhs of migrants congregate to worship the rising and the setting sun
Anuja
FIle image of Chhath celebrations in Delhi. Picture courtesy: Praveen Jain/ThePrint
NEW DELHI: On a warm October morning, Ram Kishor Sah and Ghanshyam Jha sat by the roadside on plastic chairs at a busy, noisy intersection in East Delhi’s Geeta Colony, and discussed softly the finer details of applications they must draft soon.
Over the next few days, Sah and Jha will write to more than 25-odd departments under the state government and municipal corporations to seek permission to organise the one festival that they eagerly wait for the entire year - Chhath.
Chhath is one of the most widely celebrated festivals in Bihar, and there is a huge rush amongst migrants to return home. Hundreds of special festival trains are run by Indian Railways but they fall short each year to accommodate the lakhs of migrants who flock to train stations to return to their home state. For low-income workers, it becomes a particularly expensive affair and results in loss of wages.
Both Jha and Sah are migrant workers from Bihar who came to Delhi more than four decades ago, but despite having extended families back home, they have always celebrated Chhath in Delhi, the duo said.
“I attended the first Chhath festival in Delhi in 1978 at the Yamuna ghat near ITO barrage. I clearly remember, only four devotees were present at that time and the pooja offerings were not very elaborate,” said Sah, sitting at the crossroads of Thokar number solah (16) of Geeta Colony, speaking over the noise of vehicles honking and loud music blaring from a travel agent’s office.
“Poverty and unemployment have led to more people migrating from Bihar to Delhi. People feel that traveling during festivals with a family is expensive and hence many choose to stay back here,” 61-year-old Jha said.
Sah and Jha are functionaries in a local Chhath samiti (informal association) where several low-income migrant workers from Bihar volunteer to organise the festival smoothly.
Chhath is a unique festival whose spread has been intricately linked with existing migration patterns. Experts say that as more and more people migrated from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh (Purvanchal region) towards the rest of the country, they have carried this festival with them.
Raj Kumar Sah (left) poses for a picture with Ghanshyam Jha (right) and a volunteer of their Chhath samiti, Devendra Mehta (standing). All three are migrant workers from Bihar.
Anuja/The Migration Story.
Several migrant workers from Bihar in Delhi said that they either join local Chhath samitis, volunteer with them or help organise community engagements focused on the festival.
Jha enjoys the festivities he has been able to recreate along with other migrant workers in Delhi.
“The only difference is, back home we used to celebrate it in ponds and rivers while here we use makeshift tubs,” he added.
River Yamuna in Delhi is officially out of bounds for Chhath offerings. The National Green Tribunal (NGT) in a 2015 order prohibited throwing of pooja offerings or any other material in the Yamuna owing to high pollution levels. In 2023, the Delhi high court did not entertain a petition filed by Chhath samitis seeking to allow doing puja along the banks of the River Yamuna.
Thanks to the two and several other migrant workers who volunteer, this neighbourhood in Geeta Colony like many other in Delhi will shapeshift soon, even if temporarily. The garbage strewn on the footpath will get cleared, the road spring cleaned, drains covered and the ambience noise of drudgery will soon make way for melodious folk songs.
Likewise, on the evening of November 7, thousands of water bodies (and other humbler alternatives) across prominent metropolises in the country will light up with tiny oil lamps, series lights and tube lights fitted with coloured cellophane sheets. Lakhs of migrant workers will flock such makeshift ghats outside their home states to celebrate Chhath, perhaps the only known festival where devotees worship the setting sun.
Chhath festival
FIle image of Chhath celebrations in Delhi. Picture courtesy: Praveen Jain/ThePrint
Chhath is a four-day festival of penance and devotion that celebrates nature and its several bounties. It is celebrated on the sixth day of Kartik month of the Hindu calendar. It is dedicated to the Sun God and proximity to a water body is considered essential. The fasting and prayers are led by (usually eldest) women member of the family.
First day of the festival is Nahai Khai (bathe and eat) where devotees take a bath in a holy river or a water body, clean their homes and cook traditional delicacies like pumpkin and bottle gourd. Devotees begin their waterless fasting on the second day called Kharna except for the offerings in the evening which usually includes jaggery rice pudding.
Third day is the Sandhya Arghya (evening offering) where devotees stand in the water and pray to the setting sun. The concluding day is Bhorka Arghya (morning offering) where the rising sun is prayed to. The long fast ends on this morning. Several seasonal agricultural produce like sugarcane, bananas etc is offered during this time.
The elaborate festivities and preparations mean that families often prefer to come together to celebrate it. Bihar is the second highest out-migration state in the country, according to the 2011 Census. A research paper based on survey data showed that almost one in five persons in rural Bihar is a migrant, outmigration is highly masculinised and predominantly for work.
Experts note that the ‘conspicuous celebration’ of the festival is also a means of people from the region, especially Bihar, asserting their identity and staking claim in the political landscape of the cities they migrate to.
Chhath among migrant workers
In Geeta Colony, Jha and Sah bank on several young migrant workers and their families to help with the Chhath festival arrangements. The first step begins with Sah meticulously drafting applications to seek permission from different departments. This is followed by both attending meetings called by the local administration to plan smooth running of the festival.
A small samiti on an average has four to five key organisers and around 20 people who help run the show. The number of volunteers, especially teenagers and young men, can go as high as 80 to 90.
“Over the years the festival has gained popularity and now it is much easier to find things related to the pooja. Hundreds of stalls spring up overnight before Chhath where such pooja items are sold,” Sah said elaborating how specificity is the key to finding different items including a well-knit daura (bamboo basket) in which offerings are kept.
Sah has seen Chhath celebrations in Delhi change drastically over the years. In 1977, he left his village near Motihari city in East Champaran district and came to Delhi alone in search of work. He got down from the train and came directly to this locality because he once heard someone in his village mention it.
He first worked at a small radio cabinet factory at a monthly salary of Rs. 150, a handsome pay compared to what he would have earned in his village. This was enough for Sah to decide that he would settle here. He took up several jobs after that and his immediate family moved here. All through all these years, he saw both Delhi and Chhath change its shape and form, reflecting the swelling numbers of migrants from Bihar.
Sah said a lot had changed since his first Chhath festival in Delhi when he was 34. He is 77 now. Chhath celebrations in Delhi were limited to a handful of people then and now in East Delhi alone ‘lakhs of devotees turn up’ at different places, he said.
Political influence
FIle image of Chhath celebrations in Delhi. Picture courtesy: Praveen Jain/ThePrint
Unofficial estimates put the population of those belonging to Purvanchal region as nearly one third of Delhi. This has meant that celebrations around Chhath, which is the biggest festival in the community, has become a rallying point for political parties to woo voters from the region. Several key leaders from all the three main political parties in Delhi – incumbent Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress – are from this region, specifically Bihar.
Meetings of Chhath samitis with politicians, political banners in neighbourhood celebrations, politicians visiting ghats, political parties hosting outreach events ahead of the festival, distributing ceremonial offerings and political slugfest over the festival often takes place.
With the next Delhi elections scheduled to take place in less than three months, political engagements could likely increase in this year’s Chhath celebrations.
Raj Kumar Poddar, a migrant from Bihar who is involved with the slum outreach of Congress party’s Delhi unit, said that over the years, Chhath has become “pooja kam, politics zyaade” (less worship, more politics).
“Some people on the top in power consider these samitis as means of wooing the community. Unfortunately, those belonging to these samitis are compelled to take help because they do not have enough resources. Navratra also happens in Delhi but unfortunately nothing is as politicized as Chhath is,” Poddar, who was earlier associated with a samiti in Geeta Colony, said.
Migration patterns
Historically, rural households in Bihar have engaged in labour migration as a key livelihood strategy. In the nineties, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and National Capital Region (NCR) emerged as centres of industrial growth and ‘new preferred destinations’, according to a study by labour nonprofit Aajevika Bureau and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. The study also showed that labour migration from the state has increased sharply over the last decade.
Bihar to Delhi is a high mobility migration corridor. India’s finance ministry mapped top district wise routes in its 2016-2017 economic survey by analysing railway ticketing data. It showed routes between Patna and East Delhi and between Saharsa and East Delhi as part of a list of top district routes. The only other route on the list originating from Bihar was from Saharsa to Amritsar in Punjab.
Archana Roy, who teaches at the Department of Migration and Urban Studies in Mumbai based International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), explained that in this context there are two kinds of migrant workers - those whose families stay behind and those who migrate with families. “The decision on whether to go back home during Chhath or not depends a lot on that. Often single male migrants and recent migrants tend to travel back for it,” she told The Migration Story.
In another part of Delhi, 34-year-old Poonam Devi in a slum near Mansarovar Park in Shahdara says her mother-in-law back home in Munger district of Bihar observes Chhath. However, Devi, a domestic worker, her husband who is a construction worker and their three children have not gone back to Bihar to attend the festival post the COVID-19 pandemic. This is because they can only afford one trip in a year which is usually reserved during the summer break in school.
Poonam Devi, a migrant domestic worker from Bihar, poses for a picture at her home in New Delhi.
Anuja/The Migration Story
“In Delhi, everything is about money. Even if we want go to a nearby ghat, we must hire a paid auto rickshaw. In our village, the local pond was within walking distance. In the village, those who had banana trees or gourd vines, would distribute it to other homes. But here, we must buy the smallest things because no one we know grows anything,” Devi, who came to Delhi as a teenager, said.
Despite this, Devi is grateful for the ‘family’ she has found in the slum where she lives and celebrating Chhath together is a key part of it. “We help each other, offer to cook prasad together. I miss home and my village but frankly it still feels good to be here,” she added.
According to Roy, migrant workers, and migrants in general ‘carry and preserve’ their culture. This gets more enhanced among low-income workers because limited resources mean they value a sense of community more than others.
“The geographical spread of festivals like Holi and Diwali is huge. In the way it originated, Chhath is still very localised in Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh and terai region of Nepal. Because of migration it has spread in large parts of India and abroad. Migrants took this festival along with them. And now we seen even those who are not from Bihar participate,” Roy said.
Cultural connect
“Chhath is no longer localised because people from Bihar are no longer localised. It is an old pattern of migration that has taken new forms in its current shape,” Tanweer Fazal, who teaches sociology at the University of Hyderabad, told The Migration Story.
“We associate geographies with cultures but with these substantial migrations from one place to another you can see a new kind of place making. Migrants start trying to recreate those cultures and practices which they were familiar with and Chhath is one of those festivals,” he added.
Over the last decade, visuals of Chhath ghats across different parts of the country including Southern India and abroad by the diaspora are common. Last year, the Bihar government is known to have pitched to the union government for the inclusion of Chhath in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization or UNESCO’s international ‘list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity’.
Ram Preet Sah, a migrant worker from Bihar, who is associated with a Chhath samiti poses for a picture during the festival preparation. Anuja/The Migration Story
Ram Preet Sah, a 44-year-old migrant worker from Madhubani in Bihar, is also part of a samiti in Delhi. He works at a garage which rents out e-rickshaws and mini vans. Sah said that celebrating Chhath as a community is one of the most important things that keeps migrants like him connected to Bihar.
“We continue to celebrate Chhath in the same way that our ancestors did. There are so many Purvanchalis in Delhi that if you visit any ghat during Chhath, you would also like to join from next year,” Sah said.
According to Fazal, Chhath for migrants is not ‘just about religion and religiosity’ but also about asserting their identity and their organised presence in their localities and work destinations.
“Migration is not simply an economic process that follows patterns of urbanisation etc but beyond that, migration has its own politics, stakes in culture and stakes in the local economy. Eventually, a migrant’s aim is to not simply remain a migrant but to be as much as a player or stakeholder in the society they have moved to,” he said.
This ‘visibility’ through festivals like Chhath, is also a way to take claim in politics in the region that they have adopted, Fazal added.
Back in Geeta Colony and Shahdara, several men and women who are migrant workers from Bihar said that beyond the political influence and the cultural significance that the festival holds, celebrating Chhath for them was a poignant reminder of their home. In their conversations, they recalled a list of things that celebrating Chhath away from home reminded them of.
The village pond where they congregated. The local fair at night that sold cheap decorative items. The morning chill on the last day of the festival. Neighbours who grew and distributed kaddus for offerings. Matriarchs who fasted for the entire duration. Delicacies like thekua (sweet snack) being fried in the kitchen. Cousins that got together. Songs by singer Sharda Sinha blaring on rented loudspeakers. And, everything else that they left behind.
(Anuja is an independent journalist based in Delhi and writes on the intersection of policy and politics.)
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