Maa Aarki

Maa Shakti, previously known as Aarki , is the name of the garba organization, which organizes garba festival in the city of Vadodara on a huge scale.

“Nitin Sandeshara”, a successful industrialist who wanted to make “Navratri” a global event and who strongly believed in the traditional form of Garba, started it. The organizers of the event always made sure of the traditional aspect of the event. The organizer had some rules like, the dancers will only be allowed on the ground wearing traditional clothes / dresses and regular traditional aarti of the goddess Amba. The garbas are performed in large circles around the main stage. The number of circles varies between 15-20. The singers sing traditional and new compositions in Gujarati. No Hindi films songs nor music is played as seen in other parts of Gujarat, Bombay and abroad. The lead singer is Mr. Achal Mehta who is very popular amongst the dancers. The dancers just go mad in the ground when he sings. Mr. Nitin Sandeshara who started this theme, discontinued organizing the event and since the last 8 years it is known as “ [Maa Shakti / RISHABH Group] ” but the popularity has not decreased till now. Due to this organizing committee , [ Maa Shakti / RISHABH Group ] of Vadodara has taken a global face. And now crores of rupees are spent on the event of navratri in Gujarat. The young blood wait round the year for this event.

Maa Shakti also holds a record with the Limca book of World records of holding the largest amount of dancers in the ground. The number of dancer present in the ground were around 38,850 viz. a world record.