Frequency Annual Inaugurated 1979 | Years active 37 Attendance 30 | |
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Location St. Xavier's College-Autonomous, Mumbai | ||
Malhar is the second largest inter-collegiate youth festival in Asia, hosted annually by the students of St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, India. The Mascot for malhar is a frog which is called Puddles.
Contents
Malhar began in 1979. The festival includes events cultural contests in literary, performing arts and fine arts categories, along with a number of workshops on different themes.
The festival is completely managed, organized and run by the workforce which consists of 1200 volunteers and 130 people in the organizing committee.
Theme
Each year, the festival follows a specific theme. The theme for the year 2011 was "Labyrinth". The theme for the year 2012 was "Malhar Local", which is a play on the city of Mumbai's backbone - the railways. The theme for Malhar 2013 was "Zara Hatke", which is a popular phrase that encourages people to think outside the box and try something new or in a different way. For 2014 the theme was "A Renaissance", the era of revival in the new age. In 2015, the theme of the festival is 'Malhar: A Chronicle', with an aim to serve as a perfect platform for thousands of people to voice their untold stories. In 2016, 'Malhar: The Junction' was the theme of the festival, signifying the common point where ideas, cultures and talent meet.
Mr and Ms Malhar
Mr and Ms Malhar is the talent contest to find the ultimate festival entertainer. It looks for talent, originality and sense of humour. The winners are crowned reigning king and queen of the festival.
Conclave
Since 2008, the first day of Malhar has traditionally been the day of Conclave, a forum for interaction between eminent personalities and students. Conclave hosts a number of plenary sessions, as well as an annual Keynote address. It has hosted people such as APJ Abdul Kalam, The 14th Dalai Lama, Binayak Sen, P Sainath, Ramachandra Guha, Gregory David Roberts, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Siddharth Varadarajan, Meghnad Desai, Vinod K. Jose, Devdutt Pattanaik, Aruna Roy and many others.
Band Event
Bands from different colleges compete to play different kinds of genres.
Social Cause
In addition to being a college festival that aims to entertain, Malhar is also a socially conscious festival. From cleanliness drives to tree plantations, using the Malhar platform and its numerical strength of over a thousand, the workforce tackles and promotes awareness about social issues.
M.O.W.
Malhar On Wheels is a new publicity campaign that began in 2011. Two weeks prior to Malhar, students belonging to the P.R. department go to several colleges and perform publicity gimmicks and teaser campaigns to generate interest pre-Malhar.