{"id":4565,"date":"2004-09-19T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-09-19T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2004\/09\/19\/2004-09-19-ganesha-chaturthi-festival-celebrated\/"},"modified":"2004-09-19T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2004-09-19T12:00:00","slug":"2004-09-19-ganesha-chaturthi-festival-celebrated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2004\/09\/19\/2004-09-19-ganesha-chaturthi-festival-celebrated\/","title":{"rendered":"Ganesha Chaturthi Festival Celebrated"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a HREF=\"http:\/\/athens-olympics-2004.newkerala.com\/?action=fullnews&#038;id=31938\">Source<\/a><\/P><P>MUMBAI, INDIA, September 18, 2004: Hindus here today chanted hymns and beat drums to celebrate Ganesha Chaturthi, the birthday of Lord Ganesha, the elephant-headed God. During the ten-day festival, icons of Ganesha, easily one of the best-loved Gods in the Hindu pantheon, will grace Hindu households all over the country. &#8220;We have been preparing for this festival for over a month and half now. First we arrange for cultural programs to honor Him and then the decorations, etc.,&#8221; Dhiren Pathak, a devotee, said. Huge icons of Ganesha are made for the festival, some of them over 20 feet tall (six metres) costing up to US$2,273. Over 20,000 artisans get jobs in Mumbai alone before the festival each year. For years, Ganesh Chaturthi was a personal or private affair, celebrated within homes. But at the turn of the 20th century, freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak converted it into a public event, using it as a platform for political propaganda and unity.<BR><br \/>\n<\/P> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SourceMUMBAI, INDIA, September 18, 2004: Hindus here today chanted hymns and beat drums to celebrate Ganesha Chaturthi, the birthday of,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4565","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}