Want to get married within a year? Why did 18 lakh people rush to Jaipur for ‘sacred henna’
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "Want to get married within a year? Why did 18 lakh people rush to Jaipur for ‘sacred henna’")
Jaipur’s Moti Dungri Ganesh Temple Photograph: (X)
Nearly 18 lakh people gathered at Jaipur’s Moti Dungri Ganesh Temple for the annual Mehndi Utsav to collect sacred henna, which unmarried women believe brings marriage within a year.
Nearly 18 lakh people descended on Jaipur’s Moti Dungri Ganesh Temple on September 13 to collect ‘sacred henna’, a ritual that unmarried women believe can help them find a spouse within a year. The annual Mehndi Utsav is held ahead of Ganesh Chaturthi and is rooted in a tradition that reportedly dates back around two centuries.
According to the belief, applying the henna offered to Lord Ganesh to the hands of an unmarried woman can help her get married within a year.
How the sacred henna is distributed
This year, around 3,500 kilograms of henna was brought from Sojat to Jaipur for the ritual. The henna was first offered to Lord Ganesh during the ‘mehndi pujan’. It was then distributed among devotees as prasad, or a religious offering.
Families travelled to Jaipur from different parts of India to collect the sacred mehndi. The rush led to massive crowds around the temple, with queues stretching for miles and blocking large stretches of MD Road and GLN Road.
Despite the high September temperatures, devotees waited for hours to receive the prasad. Many reportedly arrived as early as 7 am. By evening, however, the temple administration announced that the stock of henna had run out, leaving thousands of devotees without the offering.
Social media reacts to massive crowds
The festival usually attracts thousands of devotees, but this year's turnout was described as unprecedented, with nearly 18 lakh people attending the event in a single day. Videos and photographs from the gathering have since flooded social media, with some showing scuffles among devotees trying to get their hands on the sacred henna.
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The huge turnout has also triggered a range of reactions online. One X user attributed the growing popularity of the tradition to social media, writing, “Thanks to the Instagram craze, expect double the number next year.”
Another user described the scenes as “disturbing”.
“Faith really works in mysterious ways,” another X user posted. Some users also turned the marriage tradition into a discussion about India’s unmarried population. “When there are so many unmarried people, one has to wonder who is increasing India’s population,” one post read. The Mehndi Utsav has become increasingly popular beyond Jaipur, with devotees from across the country travelling to the city in the hope of taking home the temple’s sacred henna.
