Bodh Gaya gears up for Kalachakra festival

The 34th Kalachakra festival, which, is scheduled to take place from 3 to 14 January next year, will be celebrated in Bodh Gaya, Bihar, this time after a long gap of five years, and preparations are on in full swing for the festival.

With the theme of “World Peace”, the Kalachakra festival is expected to see a footfall of around 10 lakh people from across the globe cutting across all faiths. The 12-day festival is also expected to see the presence of the Dalai Lama, the religious head of the Buddhists, for a period of three days. A festival organiser told The Sunday Guardian, “Bodh Gaya is holding the Kalachakra festival after a long time and this time His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, would also be present to deliver his speech on the teachings of Lord Buddha and therefore, we expect a huge crowd. In fact, people have already started arriving in the city as the chanting festival has already begun. We are also taking all necessary measures for crowd management.” The word “Kalachakra” means “cycles of time”, and the Kalachakra system presents three such cycles—external, internal and alternative. Robin Buddhist, a Buddhist monk from Bangladesh who has already arrived at Bodh Gaya for the festival, told The Sunday Guardian, “This is one of the biggest festivals of the Buddhists and people of Buddhist faith from across the globe come here during this time.” In May 1954, the 14th Dalai Lama in Tibet held the first Kalachakra festival which was attended by over one lakh people.