West India · August–September
Also known as Vinayaka Chaturthi · Vinayaka Chavithi · Ganeshotsav
When it’s celebrated
The exact date shifts each year — it’s fixed from the panchang. Cast your free kundli or check the calendar for this year’s muhurat.
Significance
Ganesh Chaturthi celebrates the birth of Lord Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of wisdom, prosperity and new beginnings, and the remover of obstacles. Devotees install clay idols of Ganesha in homes and public pandals, worship him for several days, and bid him farewell through immersion, invoking his blessings for success and auspicious starts.
The story
By the most popular Puranic account, Goddess Parvati created a boy from the turmeric paste of her body and set him to guard her door while she bathed. When Shiva returned and the boy barred his way, an enraged Shiva severed his head. To console the grieving Parvati, Shiva replaced it with the head of an elephant and granted him primacy among the gods as Ganesha — the deity to be invoked before all undertakings.
Rituals
Across India
Though pan-Indian, Ganesh Chaturthi is most spectacular in Maharashtra — where Lokmanya Tilak transformed it into a grand public festival (Ganeshotsav) — and across Goa, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh/Telangana (where it is Vinayaka Chavithi). Public pandals in Mumbai and Pune draw enormous crowds, culminating in mass immersions on Anant Chaturdashi.
Questions
Ganesh Chaturthi celebrates the birth of Lord Ganesha, the god of wisdom, prosperity and new beginnings and the remover of obstacles. Devotees worship him for blessings of success and auspicious starts.
Lord Ganesha, the elephant-headed son of Shiva and Parvati, is the sole presiding deity of the festival.
Ganesh Chaturthi falls on the fourth tithi (Chaturthi) of the bright fortnight of Bhadrapada, usually in August or September. The date changes each year with the Hindu lunar calendar.
Devotees install clay idols of Ganesha at home and in public pandals, worship him daily with modaks, durva grass and aarti for up to ten days, and finally carry the idol in procession for immersion (visarjan).
The immersion (visarjan) symbolises Ganesha's return to his celestial home, taking devotees' misfortunes with him, and reflects the cycle of creation and dissolution as the clay idol dissolves back into nature.
Book a pooja in your name, find the muhurat, or read the day’s panchang — bring the festival into your own practice.
