This festival celebrates Ganesh, the Hindu elephant headed god's birthday or the day he showed himself on earth for the first time. During Ganesh Chaturthi people worship statues of Garnesh in their homes and communities compete to erect the largest statues. In some places statues are made out of clay and on the last day of the ten day event they are taken to the river in a musical parade and submerged one by one to cries from the crowd. Special prayers are then chanted for Ganeshs resurrection the following year and then people scatter red powder.
There are lots of significant songs, stories and dances performed for the festival and people have feasts and parties and give each other gifts. The date of Ganesh Chaturthi is fixed to the Hindu calendar and occurs somewhere between the 20th of August and the 15th of September in the Christian calendar.
