Harela 2028: Date, Rituals & Significance

Krishna Navami runs 15 Jul, 15:14 → 16 Jul, 16:21.

Elders place the harela shoots on the heads of the young with a blessing: 'Live as long as the Gangas flow, be as steady as Syahi Devi, may the harela grow a fistful, a headful'. Clay figures of Shiva and Parvati (dikara) are made and worshipped, and tree-planting drives are held — Uttarakhand keeps Harela as an official day for planting saplings. It is also kept, more briefly, at the start of Chaitra and Ashwin Navratri.

Harela is read as the wedding, or the homecoming, of Shiva and Parvati — the dikara figures represent the divine family — and as a rite of the farming year: the sprouting grain shows whether the seed is good and blesses the fields. Its three keepings (Chaitra, Shravana, Ashwin) mark the openings of the three cropping seasons of the hills.

Source: Regional / sectarian festival tradition and the sources named in the text

Harela is an agrarian festival of the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, described in regional folklore and gazetteers; since the 2000s the Shravana Harela has been promoted as a state environment and afforestation day.

• Wikipedia

1. Ten days before Harela, seeds of five to seven grains are sown in small baskets at home and watered daily.
2. On Shravan Sankranti the green shoots are cut, offered to the gods, and placed on family members' heads and behind their ears with the blessing 'ji rayaa, jaagi rayaa'.
3. Clay figures of Shiva's family (dikare) are worshipped, and the day is kept as a tree-planting festival across Uttarakhand.

• Kumaon (Uttarakhand). The sown grain cut and placed on the head with a blessing, the dikara figures of Shiva–Parvati worshipped, and tree-planting.
• Garhwal and the Nepal hills. Kept in related forms as a monsoon greenery and sowing festival.

• Kumaoni festive food — Puri, kheer and bada (urad fritters) cooked for the day.

Harela falls on Sunday, 16 July 2028. Kumaoni festival of greenery; Karka Sankranti (start of the rains).

at sunrise

Harela falls on Karka Sankranti, the Sun's entry into sidereal Cancer, around 16 July; in the Kumaoni solar calendar it opens the month of Shravan. Being a solar date, it barely moves.

Fixed to a solar ingress — the Gregorian date barely moves (a day either way as the ingress instant drifts against the civil day).