At a time when Navratri fills Gujarat's nights with colour and devotion, one corner of Vadodara quietly keeps alive a ritual that has outlasted empires, famines, and centuries of change. Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel turned the spotlight on the Amba Mata Temple at Ghadiyali Pol, Vadodara, on Thursday, 15 October 2026, sharing a tribute to a tradition where only men participate — dressed in a chunadi (sacred headscarf) and performing Garba as 'Sakhi', feminine devotional companions of the goddess.

Writing in Gujarati, the Chief Minister described the ritual as 'aastha ane bhakti nu adbhut pratik' — 'a remarkable symbol of faith and devotion' — noting that this tradition has continued at the temple for more than 150 years. The Garba circles here revolve around an Akhand Jyot, a perpetual flame, and a lighthouse of 108 diyas (oil lamps), forms of sacred illumination that are central to the ceremony's spiritual grammar.

What Makes Ghadiyali Pol's Garba Distinct

Garba is Gujarat's signature devotional dance, performed across nine nights of Navratri in honour of the goddess. But the Ghadiyali Pol variation breaks from the familiar image of mixed or women-led circles. Here, men don the chunadi — a cloth associated with feminine offering — and embody the Sakhi form, devotees who approach the divine as companions rather than supplicants. It is a ritual inversion rooted in Bhakti philosophy, where the ego of gender is surrendered in devotion.

The 108-diya lamp tower is itself a piece of living craft. The number 108 carries deep resonance across Hindu traditions — it appears in Sanskrit texts, rosary counts, and temple architecture — making the lamp arrangement not mere decoration but a structured act of worship. Dancing around the Akhand Jyot, which burns without interruption through the Navratri nights, the performers become part of an unbroken chain stretching back generations.

Why Gujarat's Leaders Keep Returning to These Traditions

Bhupendra Patel, who leads a state where cultural identity and religious observance are deeply intertwined with public life, has consistently used platforms like X to amplify temple traditions and local customs — particularly during festival seasons. The post is part of a recognisable pattern among BJP leaders in Gujarat: positioning the state as the custodian of living, unbroken Hindu cultural practice.

Vadodara, historically known as Baroda, has long been a centre of classical arts and devotional culture. Its old-city pols — walled residential clusters — are repositories of neighbourhood-specific rituals that rarely make it into mainstream coverage but represent some of Gujarat's deepest cultural continuity. Ghadiyali Pol's Amba Mata Temple is one such node: hyperlocal in geography, centuries-wide in heritage.

As Navratri 2026 reaches its final nights, the Chief Minister's post is a reminder that Gujarat's festival landscape is not monolithic. Beneath the stadium-scale Garba events and celebrity performances, small temple courtyards still hold the original form — and the men of Ghadiyali Pol still tie on their chunadi and dance, as they have for more than a century and a half.