Watch: Cork was alive with colour for Ratha Yatra celebrations

The streets of Cork were alive with colour, song, and joy last Sunday afternoon, as Ratha Yatra, the Festival of the Chariot, the world’s oldest street celebration, came to Leeside for the first time.

Some 500 people gathered at Daunt Square in glorious sunshine, crowding in front of a huge, multicoloured chariot which had been built that morning “in next to no time,” according to one garda who cycled cheerfully ahead of the celebration, as the chariot was pulled along the Grand Parade, down the South Mall and over to City Hall.

The Ratha Yatra takes its name from two Sanskrit words, ratha, meaning chariot, and yatra, meaning pilgrimage or journey. The festival has been noted by European travellers as far back as the 13th century, but custom says it dates back more than 3,000 years.

An important Hindu festival, it is celebrated at this time of year worldwide, and for the past 21 years, members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), also known as the Hare Krishna movement, have celebrated it in Dublin.

This year marks the first time that it will be celebrated three times in Ireland, first in Cork, next in Belfast on Saturday, August 3 and in Dublin on Sunday, August 4.

ISKCON has around 10 million congregational members worldwide, and its core beliefs are founded upon Hindu scripture. It was founded by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda in New York City in 1966.

The honour of launching Cork’s first Ratha Yatra fell to Labour Party councillor Laura Harmon, deputising for the Lord Mayor, Green Party councillor Dan Boyle.

She was joined by former Lord Mayor Deirdre Forde, who had been instrumental, alongside Kieran O’Connell of Cork City Council’s community, culture and placemaking directorate, in bringing the festival to the city, and together they joined members of ISKCON in burning and then breaking coconuts on the ground, in a symbolic gesture of banishing negativity.

Seven-year-old Artrina Misra performed a traditional Indian dance, and Ms Harmon was given the ceremonial task of sweeping the street before the chariot was pulled along the streets in a joyous occasion of dance and song, celebrating Jagannath, the lord of all creation.

Afterwards, at City Hall, the festival co-ordinator, Dubliner Praghosh Prabhu, told The Echo that Krishna consciousness is compatible with most monotheistic faiths, and said that his own background was originally Catholic.

By way of an aside, he recounted a story from centuries ago, when the British first arrived in India and witnessed a chariot festival in Jagannath Puri, with three chariots, they misunderstood the meaning of “Jagannath”, and thus was born the word “juggernaut”.

“Jagannath means the lord of the universe, and we’re also known as devotees of Krishna, and Krishna means the most beautiful, all-attractive person, the supreme person, so they’re names for the supreme person, but they’re not based on any sectarian principle, they’re based on the qualities that person has,” he said.

“I also consider my Christian God to be beautiful and attractive, so it’s not a sectarian thing, it’s a universal description of the lord of the universe.

“But any faith that believes that there is one supreme person, and we are all their sons and daughters, their servants, is a hundred percent valid, and a hundred percent equal to any other faith,” he said.