Guru Purnima Festival at Akkaraipatti Sai Baba Temple - ‘Then Shirdi’

   Akkaraipatti Sai Baba Temple is not only famous for being one of the largest temples for ShirdiSai Baba in South India but also legendary for the fable of its Guru Purnima celebration. The festival of Guru Purnima is celebrated with great reverence and devotion, followed by a grand puja organized to mark the occasion. When Gopalrao Gund was finally blessed with a child after requesting Sai Baba to alleviate him from his long-term disconsolateness of not having a child, he asked Baba’s permission and held a thanksgiving fair on Lord Ram’s birthday which coincided with the auspicious Urus Day, a Muslim festival honouring a Sufi Saint. It seems that Sai Baba had some ulterior motive behind this. It was his strategy to get the two communities together on one day – the unification of Hindus and Muslims. The celebrations are done on the same day, every year, even today. In Shirdi, two locally significant customs are carried out during the festival – the sack of wheat that is kept in Dwarakamani is changed and the old one is taken to Prasadalaya to be used there, and secondarily the Dwaraka mani flags are hoisted on the two corners of the mosque by Damu Anna Rasne of Ahmednagar, a friend of Gopalrao, who has been blessed with two sons by Baba and another devotee Nanasaheb Nimonkar. Descendants of these two devotees are continuing this tradition and the flags are brought in and offered at Sai Baba’s Samadhi (tomb) before taking the grand procession. The procession begins at the house of three carpenters who took the responsibility to mend the broken mosque, as an honour. Then follows the sandal procession – a tradition of anointing sandal paste. To participate in the sandal procession, devotees from various states and neighboring places turned up at the dharga (mosque). Later at the day, prayers are offered and some religious activities are organized, accompanied by devotional music like bhajan, public reading of ures and devotional texts. From then on feeding the poor was done on a large scale. The Samadhi Mandhir stays open for the entire night during this occasion with qawali sessions and bhajan songs. Every year lakhs of devotees from all the religions throng to the temple to seek darshan and blessings from the " Then Shirdi Sai Baba ".