North East’s biggest Rath Yatra turns low key

Unlike previous years, the roads of Agartala city saw no big crowd on the occasion of Rath Yatra, perhaps, for the first time in the history. Similar was the experience at Melagarh where the biggest Rath Yatra festival of the entire North East was being organized.

After, 1964, when the deities were shifted to Tripura from Comilla of Bangladesh, there was no grandeur in the observation. Temples managed by ISCKON authorities across the state also followed the same.

Member of the Parliament Pratima Bhowmik who had inaugurated the Biggest Ratha Yatra festival at Melagarh, said, “Rath Yatra is one of the prominent festivals of the people of Tripura where people forgetting every barrier come close to each other in celebration. But, this year the entire world is facing a serious situation due to the Covid 19 pandemic and we have been strictly told to maintain social distance which is not possible if a big fair or something like that is organized. Thus, we have decided to keep the Rath Yatra very much simple with less involvement of people”.

Local sources said, every year big Raths (Chariots) for the idols of lord Jagannath were designed. Each of the Rath, source claimed, used to be 52 feet of height. Nowhere in the North East apart from Tripura this festival is observed in such a gigantic way.

Meanwhile, in Jagannathbari temple Agartala, the state head quarters of Gouriya Math, thousands of people use to gather to participate in the Rath Yatra but, this year, no one had been allowed in the temple premises and the idols were just kept out of its shrine in order to follow the rituals.

“No Yatra has taken place. Devotees help us in taking the idols out of the temple and then we have left for Gundicha temple made somewhere inside the temple premises”, Shyam Sundar Das Brahmachari, one of the monks of the Gouriya Math said.

Almost similarly, Rath yatra was observed following all the protocols and restrictions at Santirbazar ISKCON temple. People were allowed inside the temple to offer Prasad to the deities following social distancing and other protocols.