Five-day Roti Festival begins today

Nellore: Five-day Roti Festival is going to start from Friday in the city and the district administration has made elaborate arrangements for the annual festival which signifies communal harmony. 

The Wakf Board had already deputed a team for monitoring all activities as part of the festival. The State government declared the festival as a State Festival in 2015 and it has been providing necessary funds for organising the event annually. 

This year it has allocated around Rs 2 crore and the Wakf Board allocated Rs 20 lakh for the festival. AP Road Transport Corporation is running 70 special services in the district from various places for witnessing the fest at Swarnala Cheruvu in Nellore city. 

All departments have been involved in conducting the event and to ensure peaceful and comfortable visit of the devotees. The festival has been considered as a ceremony without religious barriers and people from all communities attend it with utmost reverence. Normally it is treated as a ‘festival of wishes’ where people exchange various kinds of rotis and some have huge demand. 

According to the legend, the mortal remains of 12 Muslim martyrs were buried here and these soldiers fought against the British but lost their lives in the battle. Thus, the shrine of the 12 martyrs is named as 'Bara Shaheed Dargah'. 'Bara' means twelve and 'Shaheed' means martyrs, according to the tale.

There is a practice that people visit the Bara Shaheed Dargah and pray for some personal wish. If it is successful, they in turn offer the designated roti to people who have the same wish. The tradition is being followed for many decades. The traditional practice has now become a big event lasting five days where lakhs of devotees across the country visit, offer and accept various rotis. 

They have to step into knee-deep waters and exchange rotis according to the Muslim tradition. The uniqueness of the festival is that rotis are exchanged seeking fulfillment of wishes for health, education, employment, children, marriage, permanent house, foreign visit, software employment, success in business and politics etc. Last year construction of Amaravati roti was also introduced and variety of rotis has been increasing every year.

Police have arranged parking places, temporary accommodation centres at many places in city and also imposed huge restrictions on movement of the vehicles keeping huge throng of devotees in view. 

It would be a difficult situation for the city people for movement within the city with vehicles, devotees and forces to monitor law and order. A command control centre has been arranged for keeping vigil on activities of anti-social elements during the festival.