The auspicious festival of Navratri is celebrated to embrace and cherish the potential of women and to seek blessings from the Goddesses. However, steep rise in crime against women, ceaseless deterioration in their status or gender based prejudice, each atrocity is just as bone-chilling as the other. To address this aggravating paradox, DJJS Santulan, under its campaign – “Durga Pujan Ke Desh Mein Mahilaon Ke Sath Hinsa Kyu?” conducts various events across India every year to inspire the masses to respect womenfolk, the personification of the same Divine Feminine. One such event of this campaign held at Chakreshwar Mandir of Chakan in Pune, Maharashtra on 2nd October 2022.
The festival of 9 days is dedicated to diverse festivities from fasting to feasting, and celebrated grandly all across India to to venerate the Divine Feminine – Maa Shakti! But the situation is such that the claim is no more to treat women as Goddesses, but merely offer respect and extend cerebral opportunities. The emphasis of this campaign is laid on identifying women as the embodiment of love, compassion and benevolence, just like Goddess Durga, Goddess Lakshmi and Goddess Shakti and demystifying nine manifestations of Goddess Durga to inspire today’s womenfolk.
The event involved various activities from quiz to guage participants knowledge of the Navratri festival and to clarify the prevalent myths and misconceptions about the festivities. It also witnesses motivating series of Nukkad Natak to showcase the irony of worshiping Goddesses for 9 days during Navratri, and disrespect of women for the remaining 356 days. Activities like group discussions on the misinterepreted meaning women empowerment, story narration on themes like ‘Devi vs. Diva’ that unveil the significant differences between worldly accomplishments and real empowerment of women, also formed part of the campaign.
An enlightening discourse on the killing of Mahishasur demon to re-establish the status of women and invoke the inherent 'Shakti', the divine feminine potential within women of today was the highlight of the campaign. Light is shed on the literal meaning of the title Mahishasur Mardini, where 'Mahish' stands for 'Immoral', 'Asura' means 'Demon/Devil' and 'Mardini' is 'Mother Goddess Durga', representative of feminine potential; thus illustrating women power.
The program which is attended by more than 200 women participants and children, concluded with the screening of DJJS Santulan’s famous ‘Tu Hai Shakti’ track dedicated to women empowerment.
Catch a sight of grand programs held under the said campaign, by following DJJS Santulan’s official handle - @djjssantulan on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
