{"id":17440,"date":"2021-07-20T01:58:47","date_gmt":"2021-07-20T01:58:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/?p=17440"},"modified":"2021-07-20T01:59:07","modified_gmt":"2021-07-20T01:59:07","slug":"indians-breathe-easy-after-ban-on-major-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2021\/07\/20\/indians-breathe-easy-after-ban-on-major-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Major Festival Cancelled in India"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>NEW DELHI, INDIA, July 19, 2021 (Arab News): India\u2019s move to cancel a massive Hindu festival with an expected footfall of over 20 million people was the \u201cright decision,\u201d civil society members and health experts said on Sunday amid an impending third wave of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, which has claimed more than 400,000 lives across the country. Independent agencies and media reports, however, claim the actual figure is \u201cat least 10 times higher\u201d than the numbers reflected in official data. On Saturday, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in India\u2019s largest state of Uttar Pradesh called off the Kanwar Yatra, a festival for Hindu Deity Shiva, amid a steady spike in daily COVID-19 infections. Nearly 42,000 new cases were reported from across India on Sunday.<br><br>\u201cOn the appeal of the Uttar Pradesh government, the Kanwar Sanghs (the organization of Shiva devotees) has canceled the Kanwar Yatra (festival) this year,\u201d Navneet Sehgal, Uttar Pradesh\u2019s informational secretary, said in a statement on Saturday. Uttar Pradesh was forced to revise its stand after the Supreme Court on Friday called upon the state to reconsider hosting the \u201csymbolic festival.\u201d \u201cThe right to life is paramount. All other sentiments, even religious, are subservient to these most basic fundamental rights,\u201d the apex court said on Friday before asking the state government to file a response by Monday. Experts applauded the move, urging authorities to \u201ckeep learning and use science in decision making,\u201d especially during a pandemic.<br><br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1896456\/world\n\">https:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1896456\/world<br><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW DELHI, INDIA, July 19, 2021 (Arab News): India\u2019s move to cancel a massive Hindu festival with an expected footfall,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17440"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17451,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17440\/revisions\/17451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}