Galos of Delhi celebrate Mopin Festival
With traditional white attires and rice paste smeared on faces, dozens gathered together, singing songs, dancing and forming human chains at the entrance of Arunachal House in the heart of New Delhi.
On Saturday, about 500 members of the Galo tribe, along with other tribes of Arunachal Pradesh residing in Delhi gathered at the Arunachal House in Chanakyapuri to celebrate their most important festival, ‘Mopin’.
Mopin is an important agricultural festival of the Galo tribe and is annually celebrated to seek blessings of Goddess ‘Moopin Ane’ for a bountiful harvest.
Since 2014, the Galo AA0 Society, a Galo student organisation in Delhi, has organised Mopin in the national capital every year. But due to the Covid-19 outbreak, it had been postponed twice consecutively before making a comeback again this year.
Also in 2022, joining the Galo AAO Society in mounting the festival was the ‘Delhi Moopin Celebration Committee 2022’, an organisation representing senior members of the Galo community residing in Delhi.
“We are happy and privileged that many people turned up for the occasion,” Marto Bagra, deputy resident Commissioner of Arunachal Pradesh in New Delhi, tells Media India Group.
The celebration highlights include performances of tribal dances and songs. A variety of dishes reflecting traditional Galo cuisine and rice beer was also served on the occasion.
The organisers say that one of the main reasons behind celebrating the festival in Delhi is to introduce the culture and bring the ‘Galo vibe’ of the Galo tribe in the capital city and also to bring together the students of that tribe who have come to pursue their studies in Delhi.
“We have a huge number of students residing in Delhi and it is a good time in the festival for them to work together and know each other, so that in future, if a student faces a problem, they would be relieved to know that they have their seniors residing in the capital who can guide them,” Lukyir Taji, a member of the Galo AAO Society, informs Media India Group.
