{"id":23410,"date":"2026-09-23T22:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T22:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/?p=23410"},"modified":"2026-09-23T22:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T22:26:10","slug":"ganesha-enters-the-po-river-hundreds-of-hindus-in-turin-celebrate-the-god-who-removes-obstacles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2026\/09\/23\/ganesha-enters-the-po-river-hundreds-of-hindus-in-turin-celebrate-the-god-who-removes-obstacles\/","title":{"rendered":"Ganesha Enters the Po River: Hundreds of Hindus in Turin Celebrate the God Who Removes Obstacles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

TURIN, ITALY, September 14, 2026 (La Voce, translated from Italian): A statue of Ganesha is adorned with flowers, crafted from clay and painted with natural pigments. Surrounding it are hundreds of people, incense, fruit, and prayers; for a few hours, the Po becomes not merely Turin\u2019s river, but the setting for the conclusion of one of Hinduism\u2019s most recognizable rituals. This is Ganesha Chaturthi, the festival dedicated to Ganesha, celebrated on Sunday, September 13, on the riverbanks by a community largely composed of Indians living in the Piedmontese capital and students from the Politecnico di Torino and other local universities. The official celebration took place at the Terrazza del Circolo Armida on Viale Umberto Cagni and was organized by the Italian Hindu Union (Unione Induista Italiana) in collaboration with the Bharatiya Telugu Samithi Torino and the Sanjivani Torino Association. The program included the Ganesha Puja, a cultural segment including dance (above) at 5:00 PM, and the Murti Visarjan (the immersion of the statue) at 7:30 PM.

In Hinduism, this is not simply a matter of casting a statue into the water. Ganesha is traditionally depicted using materials destined to return to nature. The clay gradually dissolves, and the Deity\u2019s visible form disappears\u2014an act that evokes the transient nature of material forms and the return of elements to the natural world. For this very reason, clay mixed with natural pigments was used in Turin, allowing the figure to dissolve without leaving behind the artificial structure typical of plaster statues. A small part of this tradition has reached the banks of the Po River. This is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Turin celebration: it is not a festival imported and mechanically replicated, but a religious practice adapting to the city where an increasingly well-established community now lives. According to figures cited during the event, there are approximately 200,000 Hindus in Italy, with around 1,500 in Turin.

Much more at source.
https:\/\/www.giornalelavoce.it\/news\/attualita\/736185\/ganesha-entra-nel-po-centinaia-di-induisti-celebrano-a-torino-il-dio-che-rimuove-gli-ostacoli.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TURIN, ITALY, September 14, 2026 (La Voce, translated from Italian): A statue of Ganesha is adorned with flowers, crafted from,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23410","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\/23410","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=23410"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23427,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23410\/revisions\/23427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}