Andaman Islands · Island Realms
Festivals
| Festival | When | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Island Tourism Festival | Usually around December–January | The territory's official cultural festival at Port Blair, with performances from every community on the islands. It is a state event rather than a folk one, and it is where most visitors will see Nicobarese and Adivasi dance performed. |
| Durga Puja | Ashwin, September–October | Observed on a scale that surprises first-time visitors, with pandals through Port Blair and the Bengali settlements of North and Middle Andaman. The single clearest annual expression of the islands' East Bengal ancestry. |
| Pongal | Mid-January | Kept by the Tamil settler communities across South Andaman, with the harvest observance transferred to an island where the harvest is somebody else's. |
| Sarhul and Karma | Chaitra, March–April; Bhadra, August–September | The spring and monsoon festivals of the Chota Nagpur Adivasi settlements — the sal blossom offering at Sarhul and the karam branch at Karma, with mandar drumming and circle dance. Carried here a century ago and unbroken since. |
| Christmas and the Karen New Year | December and January | The Karen villages around Mayabunder are largely Baptist, and Christmas is their central festival; the community also keeps a New Year observance in the Karen calendar. |
| Subhas Chandra Bose flag-hoisting anniversary | 30 December | Marks the day in 1943 when Bose raised the flag at Port Blair during the Japanese occupation and named the islands Shaheed and Swaraj — the names now attached to Neil and Havelock. |
| Eid, Diwali and Vishu | Lunar and solar calendars | A working reminder that the settler population is not one community. All are public occasions in Port Blair, where four or five calendars run simultaneously in a town of a hundred thousand. |
The festival calendar of Andaman Islands — what is celebrated, when it falls and what happens. (7)