Byanjana Dwadashi                                                                                                             

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Context: Byanjana Dwadashi, a 500-year-old festival in Odisha symbolises community, food security and balanced diet

About Byanjana Dwadashi:

• It is a Vaishnavite festival.
• It commemorates an episode featuring Krishna in the Mahabharata, where Yashoda observes that her son Krishna is pale and weak. In order to fulfill his nutritional requirements, she prepares a lot of delicacies and feeds him.
• It is a celebration of food diversity, variety, community involvement, sharing, cleanliness and devotion.
• It celebrates a variety of food (Byanjana in Odia) on the 12th day (Dwadashi) of the Sukla Paksha or waxing phase of the moon in the month of Margashira (mid-December to mid-January).
• This tradition of celebrating varieties of traditional food and sharing them is prevalent in the Vaishnava mutts of of Odisha.
• Festivals like Byanjana Dwadashi which celebrate our traditional food prepared using locally available ingredients with traditional methods are a great way to address hidden hunger or micro-nutrient deficiency.

https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/food/byanjana-dwadashi-how-a-500-year-old-festival-in-odisha-symbolises-community-food-security-and-balanced-diet-81632