JHULAN YATRA FESTIVAL 2023

One of the most popular events in the holy town of Vrindavan, India - where Lord Krishna appeared approximately 5,000 years ago - is the celebration of Jhulan Yatra, the Radha-Krishna swing festival. This festival is celebrated to commemorate the childhood pastimes of Sri Krishna with His friends, the young cowherd boys and girls, swinging underneath the trees.

In ISKCON, for five days, in many of the 800 temples around the world, the small Utsav-vighraha functional Deities (Vijay-utsav bera) are taken from the altar and placed on an elaborately decorated swing in the temple room. After receiving the traditional arati worship, the Deities are pushed on Their swing. The atmosphere of this festival is especially sweet as everyone has the chance to intimately serve Radha and Krishna by pulling the swing.

In ISKCON Chandigarh, this festival is celebrated for five days ending on Balaram Purnima in the month of shravan. The deities’ beautiful swing is brought out in the courtyard and various gorgeous decorations are made around it, upon which their lordships Shri Shri Radha Madhav come and enjoy being swinged by the devotees eager to serve them. The devotees also prepare various delicious food stuffs for their pleasure and a special arati is also offered to them accompanied by sweet kirtans while they are comfortably seated on the jhulan. It is a most pleasing and satisfying festival, with the swings often highly decorated with forest creepers, Jasmine (Malati) that has newly blossomed in the season, and streamers of garlands. Sometimes they use a fine spray of rose water and direct it toward the Divine couple of Radha and Krishna on Their swing.

In all ISKCON temples throughout the world, we observe this festival for five days in accordance with Srila Prabhupada’s instructions. This is a wonderful ceremonial function of Lord Krishna’s pastimes that reflects practically how we are to render service to the Lord for His pleasure.

From, 27th August, 2023 to 31st August, 2023 , ISKCON Chandigarh celebrated this blissful festival with great love and devotion. Thousands of devotees took part in this festival and got the blessings of Their Lordships.