Four hundred years of the Nada Habba

Mysuru is a city that tells time by its festival. Every autumn, as the Navaratri moon rises over Chamundi Hill, the Amba Vilas Palace is lit by a lakh of bulbs, elephants walk in from the forests, and a goddess is carried through the streets on 750 kilograms of gold. This is Dasara — Karnataka’s Nada Habba, the festival of the land.

Origins in Vijayanagara

The celebration predates the city. The Vijayanagara emperors marked Mahanavami at Hampi with a nine-day display of military strength and royal splendour — foreign travellers of the 15th and 16th centuries wrote of processions of elephants, wrestling bouts, dancers and fireworks in the great platform-courtyards that still stand there.

When that empire fell in 1565, its feudatories carried the tradition with them. Among them were the Wadiyars of Mysuru.

The Wadiyar court, 1610

Raja Wadiyar I first celebrated Dasara at Srirangapatna in 1610, and the festival has been observed by the dynasty ever since — through the reign of the Tipu Sultan years, the restoration of 1799, and into the present day under the current scion of the family, who still holds the private Durbar in the Palace.

It was under Krishnaraja Wadiyar III that the celebration took its modern shape in the city of Mysuru, and under Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV — the philosopher-king of the early 20th century — that Dasara became the public spectacle it is now: exhibitions, sporting contests, illumination and the grand procession open to every citizen.

The Maharaja would ascend the golden throne on the first day of Navaratri, and for nine evenings the Durbar Hall held court to the sound of the palace band.Palace records, early 20th century

Dasara today

Since 1970s the State Government has organised Dasara as the Nada Habba, with the Mysuru District Administration as its executing body. What was once a court ceremony is now a civic festival of more than a hundred programmes — cultural evenings across the city’s stages, a Yuva Dasara for the young, a Aahara Mela, a Flower Show, sport, film, poetry, a two-month Exhibition, and on the tenth day the Jumboo Savari and the Torchlight Parade at Bannimantap.

The one thing that has not changed is the goddess. Chamundeshwari — the presiding deity of Mysuru, whose temple crowns the hill above the city — is carried in the golden howdah on the lead elephant, exactly as she has been for four centuries.

The emblem

The Dasara emblem carries the caparisoned elephant beneath the howdah, set within the roundel of the Palace domes — the two images that, together, mean Mysuru to the rest of the world.