By IANS
Nagpur : Thousands of people here Tuesday participated in the annual ‘Marbat’ processions, organised to ward off social evils.
Dressed in traditional attire, men carried clay idols of deities daubed in yellow and black and chanted ‘Ida, pida gheun jaa ge Marbat’ (Take away social evils and human miseries) after their women worshipped the idols.
Famous all over India for its oranges, Nagpur has kept alive this exclusive tradition dating back to the 19th century when the Bhonsla dynasty ruled.
The tradition of taking out the processions of ‘kali’ (black) and ‘pivli’ (yellow) Marbats (idols), a day after the bullock festival of ‘Pola’ every year, started in 1880 in the eastern part of the city.
While the ‘kali Marbat’ represents Bhonsla queen Bankabai who surrendered to British power, the ‘pivli Marbat’, which originally symbolized atrocities of the British rulers, today stands for social evils like corruption or epidemics.
Though the festival is predominantly organized by the Teli and Koshti (traditional oil traders and weavers) communities, others too participate in it with gusto, Jayvant Kakitkar and Suresh Harde, who head respectively the Pivli and Kali Marbat festival committees, told IANS.
A number of ‘badgyas’, (mascots) representing contemporary symbols of evil, comprise another feature of the annual processions. The main attraction this year was the ‘badya’ of Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt who has been convicted under Arms Act in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts case.
While slum dwellers and people in other low-rung localities Monday celebrated the essentially rural festival of ‘Pola’, worshipping pairs of bullocks, children all over the city celebrated ‘tanha (infant) pola’ Tuesday, moving around with wooden toy bullocks.