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इतिहास
The history, origin and significance of Chhath Puja — where it comes from, what it means, and how it changed over time.
Chhath Puja 2026: 15 November 20264 daysछठ पूजा
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Chhath Puja is the worship of the sun god Surya and Chhathi Maiya, observed over four days in Kartik, about a week after Diwali. In 2026 the main day, Sandhya Arghya, falls in mid-November. It is the single most important festival for people from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh, and it is now celebrated in Delhi, Mumbai and every city with a large Bihari and Purvanchali population.
The four days run Nahay Khay (a ritual bath and a single vegetarian meal), Kharna (a day-long fast broken at night with gur ki kheer and roti), Sandhya Arghya (the main event — the evening offering to the setting sun at a riverbank or pond, standing in the water), and Usha Arghya (the morning offering to the rising sun, after which the 36-hour fast ends).
The vrat is kept by the parvaitin — usually a woman, though men also keep it — and is rigorous: no food or water for roughly 36 hours between Kharna and Usha Arghya, and standing in cold river water for the arghya. The ritual is performed on the banks of rivers, ponds and, in cities, any water body, with families travelling home to their village for the occasion even from abroad.
The thekua is the festival's signature offering — a wheat flour and jaggery biscuit. Daura of fruits, sugarcane and thekua are carried to the ghat in bamboo baskets. The festival's environmental dimension is significant: the ghats and water bodies that host it are cleaned, and municipal work on them has become a routine part of the civic calendar in Patna and other cities.
Almost every large Indian festival means something different in different states. That is not a contradiction — it is the history.
The centre of the festival. Patna's ghats along the Ganga host lakhs of parvaitins, and the state effectively slows for four days. Chhath is the state's most widely observed festival, cutting across caste lines.
Observed with the same four-day structure on the Ganga and Sarayu in Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Allahabad and Ayodhya. The Purvanchali diaspora carries it everywhere.
Celebrated across Jharkhand with the same ghat rituals, and in Kolkata among the Bihari community, particularly at Babughat and the Ganga ghats organised for the festival.
In Delhi, the Yamuna ghats at ITO, Kalindi Kunj and Wazirabad are prepared for Chhath with temporary ponds for families who cannot reach a river. Mumbai has similar arrangements at Juhu and Powai.
Chhath is a major public holiday in Nepal's Terai region, with the same Nahay Khay, Kharna, Sandhya and Usha Arghya sequence on the Bagmati and other rivers.
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