Mangalvar Vrat 2028: Date, Vrat Vidhi & Significance

Break after the evening worship with one meal of wheat and jaggery, without salt.

Tuesday is kept for Hanuman and, in jyotish, to appease Mars. The fast runs from sunrise to sunset, broken with a meal that avoids salt and often uses only wheat and jaggery. Hanuman is offered sindoor and jasmine oil, a red cloth and boondi ladoo; the Hanuman Chalisa is read forty times or the Sundarkand recited. Many keep 21 Tuesdays for a specific wish.

Weekday vratas (varavrata) and the weekday-Pradosh combinations are set out in the Nibandha and vrata literature and elaborated in popular Vrat Katha collections; the planetary-remedy reading is from applied jyotish. The Santoshi Mata Friday vrat is a twentieth-century addition to the older set.

• Nibandha and Vrata-katha literature

1. Kept for Hanuman, and for relief from Mangal dosha: devotees visit a Hanuman temple, offer sindoor with jasmine oil, and recite the Hanuman Chalisa.
2. Red flowers and boondi are offered, and red clothes are worn.
3. Many keep it for 21 consecutive Tuesdays before the udyapan.

Phala: Strength, courage and protection from enemies and accidents; relief from the affliction of Mangal (Manglik dosha) and from debt.

The Mangalvar katha is of an old childless couple; the husband's daily worship of Hanuman won them a son named Mangal, and when Yama's messenger came for him early, Hanuman himself stood in the way and had the boy's life extended — the vow kept ever since for a child's protection.

Source: Vrata-katha tradition (the Vrat Katha Sangrah and regional collections)

1. Sankalpa. Bathe, wear red, and take the sankalpa for the Tuesday fast.
2. Hanuman puja. Offer sindoor with jasmine oil, red flowers and boondi to Hanuman.
3. Path. Recite the Hanuman Chalisa or the Sundarkand.
4. Evening meal. Take one meal of wheat and jaggery without salt.

• Sindoor and jasmine oil
• Red flowers
• Boondi or besan ladoo
• Lamp and incense
• Red lentils or red cloth for daan

• One saltless meal
• Wear red
• Keep 21 Tuesdays before the udyapan if taken as a vow

Who should not keep this fast: Those who are ill, pregnant, nursing, elderly or diabetic should keep phalahar or a fruit-and-milk fast rather than a saltless single meal, or do the puja and dana without fasting.

• Pan-Indian. Kept across North, West and Central India as a household vrat; the weekday-graha link is used everywhere in jyotish upaya.

• Red food, saltless — The vrat meal follows the day: red ingredients where possible, no salt, and often a single grain (wheat, or chana dal on Thursday). Sour food is avoided on Friday.

Mangalvar Vrat falls on Tuesday, 4 January 2028. Tuesday fast for Hanuman.

at sunrise

Mangalvar Vrat is not tied to a tithi: it is kept on Tuesday itself, ruled in the planetary week by Mangala (Mars). A vow is usually taken for a fixed run — 16, 21 or 43 weeks — and closed with an udyapan. It recurs every seven days.

The date is set by the Hindu lunisolar calendar and shifts against the Gregorian year.