Muslim family takes up Ratha Tatra in Orissa

Car festival, the Ratha Yatra is perhaps the biggest festival that is performed by the people in every nook and corner of Orissa. But it is the Puri festival that attracts every one who wishes to visit and to take part in the annual outing of Lord Jagannath, the lord of Universe. But when devotees other than Hindu are still forbidden to enter the Puri shrine, here is a village in Jharsuguda district where a family belongs to Muslim community patronages the village Ratha Yatra through generations. Surprisingly the head of the family even does chhera pahara (sweeping before lord Jagannath) ritual during the festival. This has become a tradition of the Muslim family to organise the festival over last two decades.

He being the gountia (head) of the village, Mohammad Zamil-ul-lah feels it is the duty of his family to take part in each and every festival that is celebrated in the village. “I belong to Muslim community but since I am the gountia of the village I am doing what my fore-fathers used to do in the past,” said Mohammad Zamir-ul-lah.Being a devotee of Lord Jagannath, he feels proud for the rich tradition of his family. Because of such a noble tradition of his family, the villagers give equal importance to the festival of both communities. 

“In our village, we give equal importance to all the festivals whether it is Nuakhai or Eid. We take part in their festival and vice versa. This has become a tradition of the village,” told a villager Madhav Chandra Rana. The village that is well-known as Remanda near by Brajarajnagar town in Jharsuguda district, just 90 km from Sambalpur has never experienced any communal tension because of such a noble tradition.But when Ratha Yatra is celebrated on Twitiya (2nd day of month of Ashadha), here in Remanda, the chariot of Lord Jagannath rolls after 3 days i.e. on Panchami tithi (5th day of month of Ashadha) “Earlier we used to borrow idol from nearby villages so for their convenient we purposefully delayed the function. But the tradition remains the same although now we have our own idols Lord Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra,” Gountia Mohammad Zamil-ul-lah saidAccording to him, he had witnessed the ritual of performing Ratha Yatra by his family when he was a kid. He still remembers how his grand father and father used to organise the Ratha Yatra in his village. “And this has put an impact on me I became a follower of  lord Jagannath when I grew up,” he said. 

Ratha Yatra was first organised by his great grand father Md. Masud Ali after he was appointed as the gountia of the village by the British ruler. Since then Yatra becomes the annual festival under the patronage of the Muslim family. But it is Zamir-ul-lah who started performing chhera-pahara during Ratha Yatra since 1984, a year after the death of his father Khalil Gountia. All members of the Gountia family take active part in the organisation ofRatha Yatra in the village. They feel it as their own culture. “We celebrate every festival in our village as we never differentiate between the festivals of both communities,” concluded Wakilur Nisha, wife of gountia Zamir-ul-lah.