Karma · Karam Parab Festival Karam is a Sarna festival, kept by the Munda, Oraon, Ho and Santhal of the Chhotanagpur plateau, and it is also kept as their own by the Sadan Hindu castes of the same villages and across Chhattisgarh and western Odisha, which is why it is the one day on this list that two religions hold together.

English

Karma · Karam Parab

हिन्दी

करमा

Only the names actually in use are listed. A blank script is not an omission: the day may simply not be kept there, or be kept under a different festival's name.

1. Saturday, 11 September 2027
2. Wednesday, 30 August 2028
3. Tuesday, 18 September 2029

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Worked out for Chennai, Lahiri ayanamsa. A date is a function of the place: set yours above and the next three come back for where you are.

Karam is a Sarna festival, kept by the Munda, Oraon, Ho and Santhal of the Chhotanagpur plateau, and it is also kept as their own by the Sadan Hindu castes of the same villages and across Chhattisgarh and western Odisha, which is why it is the one day on this list that two religions hold together. A branch of the karam tree is cut and planted upright in the akhra, the village dancing ground, and the night is sung and danced round it, the mandar and the nagara going until light. The Sadan households tell the katha of Karma and Dharma, two brothers who quarrelled over whether work or fate carries a life, over the same branch, and the women keep a fast for their brothers. The branch is carried to the river the next morning and set in the water, and the jawa shoots are given to the brothers to wear.

Deity

Karam Rani, Karam Devta

Kind

Festival Days of celebration: the house is decorated, a feast is cooked and the temple is visited.

Bhadrapada Shukla Ekadashi at sunrise. The branch is cut on the Dashami evening and taken to the water on the Dwadashi morning, so the Ekadashi named here is the night between them.

Sunrise 05:58, sunset 18:13, UTC+5.5. These are the instants the rule is read at, not the temple's own puja times, which every temple prints for itself.

The women who keep it fast through the day and break it after the branch has been honoured, on the jawa grain and the fruit. There is no fast on the Sarna side of the day, and the handia is offered to the branch before anybody drinks it.

Jharkhand and the Chhotanagpur plateau keep it largest, Chhattisgarh and western Odisha keep it with the Karam katha, and the Jharkhand border districts of Bihar and Bengal keep it too. Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha all gazette it.

The dates above are the Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh reckoning, because that is the calendar this key belongs to. Switch the tradition on the calendar page to see how another one dates the same day.

Every date here is computed from the Sun and Moon for the place entered, by the rule printed beside it. A printed panchangam can differ by a day where an almanac reads a tithi at a different instant, and a family's own custom always comes first. Where the practice genuinely varies, the text says so rather than choosing for you.