The celebration of GANESHOTSAV: How it all started.

In the year 1893 under the guidance of Sardar Nanasaheb Khasgiwale, the festival was celebrated in Pune. It was first ever Ganapati festival to be distinguished as a public event. The same year saw the celebration of three more public GANESHOTSAV festivals.

At the end of the festival, again for the first time ever immersion processions were taken out on the roads. This laid the foundation of the tradition of taking out procession on grand scale.



This occurrence was noticed by late Lokmanya Balgangadhar Tilak, India's veteran freedom fighter. He was a visionary and a revolutionary par excellence. Being a man of deep insight and wisdom, Lokmanya Tilak found that of all the Hindu deities, Lord Ganesha had the charm to attract people across all faiths and castes. He also observed that there were no public festivals or celebrations. All small and big festivals were celebrated individually and privately. At the maximum they were confined to small group of people or societies.

It was an era when India was struggling for its Independence. But at that time only intellectuals were involved in the freedom struggle. Tilak realized that unless and until common man was involved, the independence struggle cannot reach its peak. He knew that the common man loved festivals and undoubtedly religious festivals could gather together mammoth crowds. But unfortunately there was no big festival to bring people of all castes and even different faiths together.

The coming together of people during Ganapati festival made Tilak comprehend that Ganesh festival would be the ideal way of uniting people in a common cause. It can also be a possible means of bringing about political awareness under the pretext of a religious celebration with freedom of India being the ultimate goal. He decided to use this festival as a platform and started celebrating GANESHOTSAV as a public festival by establishing a sarvajanik or public Ganapati.

Thus he became the architect of this great festival.