Harvest festival baisakhi 2016 date significance and celebrations in punjab india

A celebration adds joy and color to our lives. It halts the tedium of our routine life disfigured by ceaseless toils and tensions of the day-to-day being. While some of these monotony-breaking celebrations are connected to religion many others are associated with the mere seasons of nature. Baisakhi festival is one such celebration that has both agricultural and religious significance.

Vaisakhi festival is mainly to celebrate the harvest in Punjab. It is fêted to announce the arrival of the harvest season.

Centered on the national lunar calendar, Baisakhi harvest festival is celebrated every year on the 13th of April, and sometimes on the 14th April, once in 36 years. This year, 2016, Baisakhi festival date is set on 13th April too.

This day is also known as the first day of the Hindu New Year and is celebrated around the country as the same as different names - In Kerala, this festival is known as Vishu while it is called as Bohaag Bihu in Assam and Pongal in Tamil Nadu. But whatever the local names maybe, it is the time for fun, celebration, music, merrymaking, and dance. While Baisakhi is celebrated differently everywhere, the festivities are best lived in Punjab, the city that celebrates it in a magnificent manner.

Baisakhi holds special significance for Hindus. For Hindus, it marks the beginning of a new year. It is celebrated in a special manner by ritual bath, special prayers, external cleaning, and worship. It is thought that goddess Ganges sloped to earth millions of years back on this auspicious day and it is on this very day that a number of Hindus gather around the sacred Ganges for the ritual bath organized in the goddess’s honor.

Baisakhi is one of the major festivals of Sikhs. For them, it is not just the harvest festival but is also the one that scripts the birth of Sikh unity and Sikh brotherhood. It was in the year 1869 that Guru Gobind Singh, the last Sikh Guru marked the Sikhs as Khalsa (the pure ones).

Thus in Punjab, Baisakhi festival acts as a tribute to the beginning of the Sikh brotherhood that has from that day carried on the Sikh outfit. It was on that particular day when Guru Gobind Singh asked any five volunteers to offer their life to guard the Sikh faith.

The celebration of Baisakhi festival is done in very special manners by the Sikhs. They visit Gurudwaras, read the holy Granth and honor the preaching of the pronounced Gurus.

To honor the ‘beloved Five’ a chain of parades are organized where a group of five men walks with the holy book in front of them with their swords were drawn. As soon as the parade ends, other celebrations start, which includes feasting, community meals, dance, and music. It is now when the youth do the popular Bhangra dance.

This dance expresses the tale of the farming process right from the soil tilling till the crops are harvested. The changes in drumbeats, dramatizes the process from cultivating, seeding, weeding and finally reaping.

With so much happening on this one day, save the Vaisakhi festival date in your calendar this year to witness the various forms of celebration!