Rash Mela in the Sundarbans: Exploring sacred rituals, ecological challenges, and community cohesion in balancing cultural celebration with conservation

Rash Mela is a century-old Hindu-origin cultural festival held annually in the Sundarbans mangrove forest (SMF) of southwestern Bangladesh, drawing tens of thousands of Hindu and Muslim participants to Dublar Char island for three days of sacred rituals, interfaith celebration, and commercial exchange. While the festival strengthens community bonds and cross-religious participation, it simultaneously generates ecological pressure. Grounded in functionalist theory and informed by ethnographic work on human–forest relations in the Sundarbans, this study examines how the festival's rituals, cultural exchanges, and socio-economic activities sustain social unity while producing environmental strain. Data were gathered through 27 in-depth interviews across eleven stakeholder categories, conducted in two phases (2023 and 2025). Interviews were coded in NVivo 14 following Braun and Clarke's six-phase procedure, combining a theory-derived coding frame with inductively generated codes. Three functions were identified: reinforcing spiritual and cultural tradition through rituals including Bonbibi (a guardian deity of the Sundarbans) worship and Punyasnan (communal sea bath); enabling interfaith participation across Hindu and Muslim communities; and generating both livelihood opportunities and ecological stress through tourism and waste accumulation. Participants also read ecological condition as ritually meaningful, interpreting refuse returned by the sea during Punyasnan as prayers rejected. Beyond these integrative functions, the festival reveals tensions between economic interest and conservation, between state-regulated access and community claims, and between short-term livelihood and long-term sustainability. Rash Mela shows that cohesion and ecological harm can be produced by the same practices, which complicates functionalist accounts treating them as separable functions and dysfunctions.