VISHVENDU JAIPURIAR
Hazaribag, Mar.30: When Ram Navami ends on Navami night everywhere in the country, it starts as dashmi in Hazaribagh taking one full day(11th) to complete. Known as the international Ramanavami, more than 100 akharas make the festival grand and different from other places. But it witnesses huge police arrangements with police officials confirmed as the highest deployment of forces in terms of numbers in comparison to any of the districts in the state.
Ramanavmi was started by one Guru Sahay in the year 1918 with the support of his five friends. From that day till today, Ramanavmi has taken a grand change with the coming up of many akharas. In past years, due to communal incidents, Hazaribagh was declared a communally sensitive district resulting in a huge deployment of forces.
Earlier, each and every akhara used to book Tasha parties from different districts of Bengal which was a major attraction of the Ramanavmi procession. But for the last few years, DJs replaced Tasha. But now the administration has banned DJs and Tasha again has been booked by many.
During the procession, each akhara takes out its jhanki with hundreds of its members playing with traditional weapons. Several hundreds of curious onlookers got injured by these traditional weapons.
This is the reason why Ramanavami gives sleepless nights to officials. Last night a team comprising DIG Narendra Kumar, DC Nancy Sahay, SP Manoj Ratan Chothe, DDC Prerna Dikshit, IAS probationer Shatabadi Majumdar and SDO sadar Vidya Bhushan toured 6 km of the procession route, checking the barricading to other security measures.
Sahay said that the district administration is on alert making all necessary security arrangements as well as basic facilities for those coming to see the procession here. She appealed to all to celebrate the festival with peace and harmony. We have also attended meetings with akharas to ensure no trouble during this festival, she added.
