Overview
- Devotees observed Nahay-Khay on November 13, taking sacred baths and eating the simple Kaddu Bhaat meal as the four-day Chhath Mahaparv began.
- Nahay-Khay is treated as a day of purification that prepares participants for the tougher fasts to come by focusing on cleanliness, ritual bathing and sattvic food.
- Kaddu Bhaat—made from pumpkin or bottle gourd with rice—is cooked without onion or garlic and typically uses rock salt and minimal spices to symbolize modesty and easy digestion.
- BJP leaders including Nitin Nabin, Rajnath Singh and Biplab Kumar Deb issued public festival greetings that praised the festival’s values of purity, devotion and togetherness.
- Chhath is a regional four-day festival concentrated in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh that honors both the setting and rising sun and culminates in riverbank offerings and a strict waterless fast.