Onam, a harvest festival held annually in the months of August/September, is celebrated throughout India and the world and is the main festival among Keralites. Onam is celebrated as our festival, as Malayali and not as Christian Malayali, Muslim Malayali, Jewish Malayali, or Malayali.
According to the Malayali calendar month of Chingam, the festival falls on the 22nd of Nakshatra Thiruvonam and marks the beginning of the Malayalam year, called Kolla Varsham. It is a festival that welcomes the return of the king of Kerala, who gave the best treatment to his subjects. And these subjects included people from all the religions that were prevalent at the time in Kerala.
We could dispute all this by saying that there was no religion other than Hinduism at that time in Kerala, but that could still be somewhat questionable.
10-day long festival
- Atham: The Onam celebration begins with Atham.
- Chithira: Chithira is the second day of the festival.
- Chodhi: The third day of Onam is celebrated by meeting family members and exchanging gifts.
- Vishakam: The fourth day marks the preparation for Onam Sadhya, the festival of Onam, and is considered the most auspicious day of this festival.
- Anizham – On the fifth day, the Vallamkali boat race (snake boat race) is held from the town of Aranmula on the banks of the Pamba River in Pathanamthitta.
- Thriketta: Families return to their ancestral homes to exchange more gifts and offer prayers.
- Moolam: Temples start offering special sadhyas (feasts) for people from this day.
- Pooradam – The eighth day is of importance in the festivities as the idols of Vamana
- Uthradom: The festivities begin on a grand scale on the day of Uthradom.
- Thiruvonam: The tenth day of the festival is the most crucial of the Onam festivities.
Why Onam is not a Hindu festival
Onam is a harvest festival. It is widely celebrated by Malayalees inside and outside of Kerala. It has no religious boundaries and is celebrated by both Christians and Muslims. As a Malayali living outside of Kerala, our celebration basically consists of organizing POOKALAM, doing ONA SADHYA and distributing sweets to our loved ones. The people who are part of Kerala Samaj will do more than this. But we are not part of that.
A Twitter user explained why Onam is not a Hindu festival. The tweet read, “Onam is not a Hindu festival. Onam is not a monolithic festival. It’s a Malayali Harvest festival. Onam belongs to everyone who was born or has links to Kerala. In the eyes of Asura King Maveli (Mahabali), all Keralites are the same regardless of caste & religion.”
It further reads “TK Velu Pillai observes in ‘Travancore State Manual (1940)’, that the Onam celebration is part of the social amusement and Christians, Muslims and Hindus celebrate Onam. William Logan in his book (Malabar Manual – 1887) mentions that Onam is about feast and harvest.”
“An overwhelming percentage of ‘Onapattukal’ or Onam songs were related to harvest and sung by the subaltern castes. The 1810–1821 survey of Kerala by Ward and Conner notes that Onam was a time of rest and enjoyment for the otherwise back-broken Dalit & Ezhava communities”, further added.
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