Three religious ceremonies bring colour and fervour to the streets and beaches of Mumbai

A group of UK students visiting Mumbai in August heard from one lecturer that the city was a “melting pot” or a “mosaic” of different religions.  If they had been able to stay on until September the students would have seen for themselves a graphic and vivid demonstration of the lecturer’s words springing to life. In what must be an unusual confluence of events three of Mumbai’s major religious groups were celebrating very different events across the streets and beaches of the city and its suburbs over the weekend of 11/12 September.

The largest religious group in Mumbai is of course Hindus, and in September they celebrate the festival of the elephant-headed god, Ganesh.  Apparently the festival is most fervently celebrated in Maharashtra, as Ganesh is the Patron Deity of this State and festivities reach a fever pitch in Mumbai, the State capital. The streets were alive with celebrations beginning on Saturday 11 September. Giant idols of Ganesh have been constructed, and at the weekend started to parade around the city on trucks accompanied by drum players and fire-crackers.  I’ve never had such a noisy or entertaining run to the local park! Later the first of some smaller idols, prepared by families, were taken down to Chowpatty Beach and immersed in the Arabian Sea after a simple but clearly important ceremony.   The festivities continue for ten days, concluding with the immersion of some of the bigger and highly coloured Ganeshas in the sea in a major celebration on 22 September.

But if these noisy and attractive processions were not enough for one weekend and one city, Mumbai was also the centre of celebrations by the large Muslim community, to mark Ramzan Eid. In a bay just 10 minutes drive from Chowpatty, thousands of Muslim worshippers, many dressed in their finest and most elaborate clothes, gathered at the beautiful Haji Ali Mosque.  Streams of pilgrims crossed the narrow causeway, cut off at high tide, to reach the Mosque.  For the entire world it was possible to believe the setting was a seaside mosque in the Middle East.

In another part of Mumbai, the suburb of Bandra, a smaller number of worshippers gathered on the same weekend at the Church of Mount Mary, to celebrate Bandra Fest and the Nativity of Our Lady. While most visitors to Mumbai expect to see many reminders of its inhabitants’ Hindu and Muslim faiths, the presence of Catholic churches – a throwback to the Portuguese occupation of Goa – can come as something of a surprise.  Mount Mary Church contains a relic recovered by Mumbai fishermen which is believed to aid cures, and the roads around the Church were full of stalls selling miniature, plastic body parts to aid recovery.

The confluence of these three major religious festivals in one weekend is unusual, and certainly gave Mumbai an intensity and passion which lasted throughout the weekend and into the night. Had the visiting UK students still been here they would have been left in no doubt, as every business visitor needs to know, that religious belief remains a key ingredient to begin to understand the complexities of Mumbai.