Coronavirus effect: Kerala's Thrissur Pooram called off

This year's Thrissur Pooram, a famous temple festival of Kerala with much tourist attraction, has been called off in view of COVID-19.

The parading of elephants and fireworks are the major attraction of the Thrissur Pooram held at the Thekkinkadu ground premises of the Vadakkunnathan temple in Thrissur town. This year's Pooram was scheduled to be held in the first week of May.

A meeting of representatives of ten temples associated with the festival was convened by the government on Wednesday. All the temples, including the Paramekavu Bhagavathy temple and Thiruvambadi Sri Krishna Temple, backed the government's decision to call off the Pooram. Though there were proposals to parade at least one elephant, it was also turned down as it could even attract a crowd.

Agriculture Minister V S Sunilkumar, who chaired the meeting, said that all events planned as part of this year's Pooram were called off. Only the rituals inside the temple would be held, said Mr. Sunilkumar, who is the Thrissur MLA.

The Pooram festival, considered as a mother of all temple festivals in Kerala, is being held over the last two centuries. It was called off only on a few occasions like Mahatma Gandhi's assassination and India-China war. The last time the festival was called off was in 1960's owing to some dispute among the organisers. But even on those occasions one elephant used to be paraded.

At least 1,000 temple festivals in Kerala had to be called off due to COVID-19. March-April is the peak season of temple festivals in Kerala. Animal rights activists are quite relieved that the cancellation of festivals brought relief to the elephants from the torture they allegedly face while being paraded in scorching heat for hours. Every year there used to be instances of elephants running amok during festivals and claiming lives.