Suparna Sircar
Amity School of Architecture and Planning
Amity University Uttar Pradesh
Lucknow Campus, India
ssircar@lko.amity.edu
Santosh Kumar
Amity School of Architecture and Planning
Amity University Uttar Pradesh
Lucknow Campus, India
skumar7@lko.amity.edu
Abstract
The Bada Mangal festival, unique to Lucknow, India, transforms the city’s urban landscape through the re-enactment of Nawabi-era myths centred on Lord Hanuman. In an era of rapid urbanization that often erodes cultural heritage, Lucknow’s example demonstrates how traditional practices can be leveraged to prioritize community well-being and spatial equity. This paper examines how rituals like mass communal feasts (bhandaras) and pilgrimages temporarily reshape streets and public squares into vibrant, inclusive spaces, reflecting Lucknow’s syncretic Ganga-Jamuni culture. Analysing spatial, social, and economic impacts, the study argues that such myth-driven placemaking fosters social cohesion, local economies, and spiritual identity. Through ethnographic fieldwork, spatial mapping, and archival research, the research highlights how temporary and permanent adaptations from pedestrian corridors to renovated temple precincts offer a culturally grounded model for designing resilient and equitable cities, challenging conventional top-down urban planning. By analysing Bada Mangal’s multifaceted impact on streetscapes, sacred architecture, and public spaces, this study argues that such myth-driven placemaking offers an innovative model for designing inclusive, resilient cities.
Introduction
In an era of rapid, often homogenizing urbanization, the role of cultural heritage in shaping resilient and inclusive public spaces is a critical area of inquiry. This paper posits that traditional festivals are not merely events within the city but are active agents in its continual production and transformation. Focusing on the Bada Mangal festival in Lucknow, India, this study investigates how myth and ritual coalesce to form a dynamic process of “organic placemaking” a bottom-up, community-driven reconfiguration of urban space that challenges top-down planning paradigms.
The theoretical foundation draws from the rich scholarship on placemaking, which emphasizes the social construction of place through lived experience and cultural practice (Cresswell 2015). Specifically, it engages with the concept of “ritual space,” where temporary, performative acts can institute lasting social and spatial orders (Turner 1969). Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, provides a historically resonant context for this exploration. Renowned for its syncretic Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb a composite culture born from Hindu-Muslim coexistence the city’s identity is deeply intertwined with its Nawabi history (Oldenburg 1984). The Bada Mangal festival, celebrated exclusively in Lucknow, is a direct manifestation of this heritage. Its origin myth, which recounts the divine intervention of Lord Hanuman in curing the Nawab Muhammad Ali Shah’s son in the 19th century, anchors the festival in a historical narrative of royal patronage and interfaith harmony. The primary ritual of the festival, the bhandara (large-scale communal feast), is a spatial practice that embodies values of generosity and shared citizenship, temporarily reclaiming streets and squares as sites of civic engagement (Khan 2019).
This study examines how these mythic narratives and ritualistic re-enactments spatially reconfigure Lucknow, generating both ephemeral landscapes and prompting permanent infrastructural adaptations. By analysing the festival’s impact, this research contributes to a broader understanding of how culturally-grounded practices can inform equitable urban design, fostering spatial equity and community well-being amidst modern urban challenges.
Scope and Theoretical Framework
This study is framed by the theoretical premise that urban space is not a static container but a dynamic entity continuously produced through narrative and practice. It explores how the “living myths” of Bada Mangal shape Lucknow’s socio-material landscape through four interconnected lenses. First, drawing on Hayden’s work on the power of place, it examines Myth as Urban Narrative, analysing how Nawabi-era legends, particularly the miracle of Hanuman healing the Nawab’s son, anchor the city’s spatial identity and sanctify specific locales like the Aliganj Hanuman Temple as enduring epicentres of civic memory. Second, the study investigates Ritual as Placemaking, conceptualizing the bhandaras (communal feasts) and processions not merely as events but as performative acts that temporarily reclaim and redefine streets as sites of generosity and interfaith harmony, embodying Lucknow’s syncretic Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb in a manner resonant with Khan’s analyses of shared culinary and sacred spaces. Third, the scope encompasses the Spatial Transformation instigated by the festival, where the massive gathering necessitates and influences urban planning, leading to pedestrian-friendly corridors and renovated ritual infrastructures like the Pampa Sarovar tank, illustrating what Hou terms “insurgent public space” (Hou 2010) temporary appropriations that can catalyse permanent physical change. Finally, the research analyses the Cultural-Economic Synergy wherein street vendors, artisans, and pilgrims generate a vibrant festival economy, sustaining local livelihoods and demonstrating the embeddedness of the informal economy within cultural performance, a phenomenon noted by Edensor in his work on cultural complexes (Edensor 2020). The scope of this inquiry, therefore, spans historical archives, ethnographic fieldwork, and spatial analysis to holistically reveal the processes through which myth and ritual converge to drive an organic, community-centric model of urban placemaking.
Methodology
This study employs a mixed-methods approach to comprehensively analyse Bada Mangal’s role in placemaking. The research integrates ethnographic fieldwork, including participant observation and interviews during the 2025 festival, with spatial mapping to document and quantify the transformation of urban space through pedestrian flows and temporary infrastructure. This contemporary data is contextualized through archival research into Nawabi-era and colonial records, tracing the festival’s historical evolution. Finally, the methodology is action-oriented, utilizing co-design workshops with municipal officials and temple committees to prototype practical, myth-responsive urban design interventions.
Case Study: Bada Mangal in Aliganj 2025
The 400-year-old Aliganj Hanuman Temple serves as a quintessential case study of mythic placemaking in action. Its very location is anchored by a founding legend of an elephant carrying Hanuman’s idol that refused to move establishing a sacred geography that persists today. This myth is annually re-enacted through ritual re-enactments; grand aartis and havans honor Nawabi-era vows, while massive bhandaras feeding over 50,000 people daily temporarily transform surrounding streets into profound sites of communal solidarity (Figure 1). The festival has also prompted tangible urban adaptations, such as the renovation of the Pampa Sarovar tank and strategic traffic diversions, demonstrating a form of adaptive governance that seeks to balance heritage with modern urban demands (Figure 2). However, this vibrant convergence of faith and urban life is not without tension, as challenges like commercial encroachment and waste management reveal the ongoing friction between ephemeral ritual practices and the city’s permanent systems (Figure 2).
Figure 1: Visuals from Bada Mangal congregation in an urban locale of Lucknow. (Source: Suparna Sircar)
Figure 2: Visuals of urban and management challenges during a Bada Mangal congregation in an urban neighbourhood of Lucknow. (Source: Suparna Sircar)
Modular Design intervention for Ephemeral Placemaking
The annual re-enactment of placemaking during the Bada Mangal festival presents a unique opportunity to introduce a responsive architectural system that bridges the gap between ephemeral ritual and permanent urban infrastructure. The proposed intervention is a modular kit-of-parts, designed around lightweight, durable, and locally resonant materials. The primary structural framework would utilize a system of hollow, powder-coated aluminium poles and connectors, chosen for their corrosion resistance, strength-to-weight ratio, and potential for easy assembly by community volunteers. Stretched across this framework would be tensile canopies made from high-strength PVC-coated polyester fabric, selected for its ability to provide large spans of shade, its vibrant colour potential echoing the festive symbol in bright red/orange, and its quick-drying, waterproof properties (Figure 3). This core system of “portable shade” would be complemented by modular service cores robust, wheeled units fabricated from recycled polymer composites. These cores would house essential services for the bhandaras: potable water tanks with integrated taps, secure storage for cooking vessels, and segregated bins for organic and inorganic waste generated by the feasts (Figure 4). The true innovation of this system lies in its incremental and context-sensitive deployment. The standardized components can be configured as a dense cluster of shaded seating areas in a tight urban square one year, and then reconfigured the next into a linear, processional canopy guiding pilgrims along a major thoroughfare. This material strategy not only dignifies the ritual by providing a dedicated, safe, and hygienic environment but also creates a recognizable, semi-permanent civic identity for the festival. It formalizes the community’s organic placemaking without fossilizing it, allowing the urban fabric to breathe and adapt in tandem with the living traditions of Lucknow.
Figure 3: Conceptual Modular design idea of temporary shade which requires minimum efforts for setting up and is easily portable to different locations. (Source: Santosh Kumar)
Figure 4: Conceptual Modular temporary shade design setting with basic services including waste collection at source. (Source: Santosh Kumar)
Intended Conclusions & Outcomes
The study concludes by positing that the Bada Mangal festival demonstrates how myth-ritual cycles drive a form of organic, bottom-up placemaking, offering a vital counterpoint to conventional top-down urban design paradigms. From this theoretical understanding, several practical outcomes and policy interventions are proposed. These include the establishment of designated “Cultural Corridors” that pedestrianize routes connecting key temples like Aliganj and Hanuman Setu, and the creation of “Heritage Zones” with zoning protections and modular utility hook-ups to sustainably support bhandara clusters. Furthermore, the integration of digital storytelling through augmented reality apps can layer mythic narratives onto physical landmarks, enriching the visitor experience. Ultimately, this research advocates for recognizing such festivals as legitimate tools for promoting urban equity, demonstrating how culturally grounded practices can foster spatial inclusivity and community resilience within rapidly modernizing cities. The “myth” of responsive urban design is that it may be a fixed set of rules. In actuality, it is a dynamic, continuous process of listening to the environment, the past, and the people while continually adjusting and evolving. The extent of evolution can be of this intervention can be assessed if this culminates into returning to one’s hometown for the festival, like Diwali or Christmas, as a way to reconnect with family, celebrate cultural heritage, and experience the unique traditions of that time of year.
References
Cresswell, Tim. 2015. Place: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Edensor, Tim. 2020. “Cultural Complexes and the Productive Intersection of Tourism and Informal Economies.” Tourism Geographies 22 (1): 62–83.
Hayden, Dolores. 1997. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Hou, Jeffrey, ed. 2010. Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities. London: Routledge.
Khan, S. 2019. “Food and Faith: The Bhandara as a Site of Syncretic Practice in Lucknow.” South Asian History and Culture 10 (3): 287–305.
Oldenburg, Veena Talwar. 1984. *The Making of Colonial Lucknow, 1856-1877*. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Turner, Victor. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing.
