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About
Utsava Maa is a platform for women around the world to meet, inspire and embolden one another to take environmental and social action within their local and global communities,
no matter what their story.
What is Utsava Maa?
Utsava Maa (Celebration of the Great Mother) is a powerful all-women’s festival hosted by Shri Jasnath Asan in Rajasthan, India, bringing together participants from across the globe to respond to environmental challenges through collaboration, creativity, and community action. Rooted in ecology, tradition, and shared responsibility for the wellbeing of all species, the festival offers a nurturing space for women to share knowledge, build skills, and explore meaningful, locally grounded approaches to ecological care and cultural continuity.
Blending wisdom from both Eastern and Western traditions, the festival’s dynamic programme includes inspiring talks, hands-on workshops, specialised yoga and meditation practices, artistic performances, and cultural exchange. Each activity is designed to offer practical tools for resilience and regenerative living — equipping participants to take mindful, informed action within their own communities.
Hosting Utsava Maa in Rajasthan’s Marwar region is especially significant, as the area faces increasing pressures from drought, heatwaves, and water scarcity. These shifts deeply affect local life, particularly for women who are central to caregiving and land stewardship. By offering access to shared resources, practical education, and supportive networks, the festival uplifts women’s capacities and contributions — cultivating ecological awareness and encouraging young women to re-engage with traditional and emerging roles in conservation and community resilience.
Themes of Utsava Maa
The following themes form the heart of Utsava Maa, guiding the festival's mission and activities, and reflecting its deep commitment to empowering women through ecology, divinity, and creativity.
Seed Films
Preparing the Ground
The opening days of Utsava Maa invite us to arrive gently — to land, exhale, and attune to the rhythm of the land and the community forming around us. These first three days unfold as the Seed Film Conference: a curated series of screenings that open the heart and prepare the ground. Like a gardener tending the soil, these films loosen the surface of our everyday thoughts, making space for something new to take root.
Each film is a seed — created by women and centred on ecology, interconnection, justice, and reimagining the world. They are not just stories, but invitations: to feel, to question, to imagine otherwise. Through them, we begin to explore the festival’s core inquiries: What does it mean to live in right relationship? How do we create, sustain, and heal in times of change?
After each screening, we gather in conversation with the filmmakers — a space for reflection, dialogue, and shared meaning-making. These moments mark the first roots of connection: questions taking shape, perspectives enriching the soil of our collective inquiry. The Seed Film days are not about passive watching — they are the quiet beginning of inner and outer cultivation. By the end of the third day, something subtle has begun to grow within us and amongst us.
We are no longer strangers. The ground is prepared. We are ready to bloom.
Main Festival
Tending to the Growth
With the seeds of story and reflection planted, Utsava Maa opens into its second movement: three full days of talks, workshops, embodied practice, ceremony, and creative exploration. This is the bloom — the time when energy rises, ideas unfurl, and connection deepens. Here, we shift from witnessing to participating, from reflection to response. It’s a time for tending — to ourselves, to each other, and to the visions beginning to grow.
These days unfold in a rhythm that holds both structure and spaciousness. Mornings begin gently, with practices that awaken the body and centre the spirit. From there, we move into shared meals and rich offerings — spaces of learning, unlearning, and exchange. Some moments invite us to listen deeply; others call us into movement, making, or ritual. Each day is a tapestry of exploration, woven through with curiosity, creativity, and care. As the light softens, so too does the pace. Evenings offer space for integration — through ceremony, gathering, or rest — allowing what has stirred in the day to settle and root.
This is not a time for performing or producing, but for being in process. For showing up fully — with your voice or your silence, your questions, your presence. Over these days, something begins to take shape: not a fixed outcome, but a living web of relationship and possibility.
By tending gently to the spaces between us — with attention, with care — we allow the festival to bloom in its own time: wild, grounded, and full of life.
Utsava Maa 2020
Why is Utsava Maa all-female?
Utsava Maa is an all-women’s festival rooted in eco-feminist principles, recognising the deep interconnectedness between the exploitation of nature and the suppression of the feminine. Eco-feminism teaches us that the same systems of power that dominate and silence women also degrade and endanger the Earth. In response, Utsava Maa creates space for women to gather, share, and lead efforts in ecological and community renewal—drawing from ancestral knowledge, lived experience, and collective care.
The festival centres women’s voices, skills, and wisdom. In many communities, male voices—often without intention—tend to lead shared spaces. Here, we offer something different: seven immersive days to reconnect with embodied, emotional, and spiritual ways of knowing—wisdom long held in our communities, yet often pushed to the margins.
As caretakers of land and culture, women hold deep insight that deserves space to rise. Utsava Maa is a sacred container for this—a return to feminine spaces and sisterhood rituals that have sustained us for generations.
This gathering does not arise from disregard for men, but from a desire to protect and nourish the quiet power of female connection. We honour the vital role all genders play in challenging harmful systems and building just futures. Yet in many contexts, even well-meaning male presence can limit women’s ability to fully express and lead.
Utsava Maa offers a space for women to expand—together, unguarded and supported.
The climate crisis is impacting women first and foremost—especially in rural and vulnerable regions. In Rajasthan, erratic rainfall, rising temperatures, and water scarcity are placing increasing pressure on women who manage land, homes, and communities. Utsava Maa responds to these realities by uplifting the strength, creativity, and leadership of women in the region and beyond. Our focus is on reconnecting young women with conservation knowledge, land-based practices, and ecological roles rooted in their own cultural knowledge and lived experience.
We recognise that womanhood is not a fixed experience, and that gender exists beyond the binary. We warmly welcome all who identify as women, as well as FINT (female, intersex, non-binary, and transgender) individuals who feel aligned with Utsava Maa’s spirit. This is not about exclusion—it is about creating sanctuary for those too often marginalised.
By investing in this space, we are not closing a door—we are opening one: into a magical, healing realm where feminine wisdom rises and new, life-giving paths begin to unfold.
