Festival of throwing stone

Festival of throwing stone

Many festivals are celebrated throughout the world and some of them are very weird which leaves us in awe. One of such festivals is ‘ The stone pelting festival’ or ‘Patharon ka Khel‘ is an annual festival in many districts of himachal and uttarakhand .

People in Dhami celebrated this festival on Tuesday after two years of Covid pandemic .
The ‘auspicious’ and ‘customary’ event is held as a sort of contest between two groups of locals of the villages. This stone pelting happens at a designed place .

This fair has been there for 400-500 years. According to people’s belief this ritual originated in the 18th century when humans were sacrificed to appease Goddess Bhadrakali. Later, human sacrifice was stopped and instead a ’tilak’ of blood was smeared on the statue of the goddess after the stone-pelting festival. The contestants line up and pelt stones at each other till one participant is hurt and blood oozes out. The contest then ends and a tilak of blood is smeared on the idol.

After this the fair ends . It was done to end the evil practice of human sacrifice .
Pandemic affected this drastically . However people didn’t stop celebrating the event and did not break the tradition even in the pandemic but huge masses were not able to participate .
That was the main reason for the enthusiasm that people had for this fair . Their excitement was high. People enjoyed it fully and were able to celebrate it to their fullest.

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Malvika Tiwari Malvika Tiwari,
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