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| RAMA RAJYA - THE EPITOME
OF PEACE AND PROSPERITY |
The festivals associated with Rama's incarnation and celebrated
In India are Rama Navami, Diwali and Dussehra. The first one is associated with the birth
of Lord, Rama, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu. This birthday of Rama falling
on the ninth day of the Hindi month called Chaitra is celebrated in almost all
Vaishnava temples. Congregations are organized, sermons delivered and songs sung
by devotees.
Dussehra is the culmination of the ten-day celebrations, organized to exhibit
the episodes from the life of Lord Rama. For the first nine days the whole story
of Rama is enacted on stage with great pomp and show. On the tenth day the last
episode of Rama ' s victory over Ravana is shown and the effigies of Ravana,
his brother Kumbhkarna and his son Indrajit are burnt amidst loud rejoicings.
In all the big cities of UP, Bihar, MP, Delhi and Mysore this festival is a day
of mass celebrations. Lakhs of people gather in vast fields and open spaces to
witness the burnings of the effigies and the fire works following the same.
Diwali is celebrated, according to one legend, on the day Rama was crowned after
his return to Ayodhya with Sita. As Rama had ascended the throne on this day,
King Vikramaditya who probably started the custom of lighting lamps as a part
of Diwali festival selected the same auspicious day for the coronation too. Diwali
is the most important festival of the trading community in Western India, where
money is spent lavishly on this day. Sweets are distributed amongst friends and
relatives; public buildings in cities are beautifully illuminated and children
are supplied with a good stock of crackers, which they use till late hours in
the night. Houses are cleans and neatly whitewashed while in business houses
new account books are started.
According to one of the Upanishads, named RAMA-PURVTAPNI
Upanishad, "Just
as the whole nature of the large banyan tree is contained in its tiny seed, so
also the whole universe moving and unmoving, is contained in the word-seed Rama".
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