Festival preserves Punjabi culture for the next generation
Up to 2000 people have come together to celebrate food, music and dance at the 2025 Punjabi Virasat Cultural Mela in Murray Bridge.
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A huge crowd has gathered in Murray Bridge to celebrate Punjabi culture in one of the biggest festivals of its kind in South Australia.
Between 1500 and 2000 people came to the eighth Punjabi Virasat Cultural Mela, held at Murray Bridge Racing Club on October 19.
Bhangra music blared out of speakers beside a stage as colourfully and intricately dressed dancers and singers performed to an appreciative crowd.
Hundreds lined up for frangrant-smelling bowls of food or socialised while children played on the grass.
Star of the show was Surjit Bhullar, a pop star and heartthrob with a social media following numbering in the hundreds of thousands.
But some of the biggest cheers were for the traditional tug of war, contested this year between a team from the Riverland and a combined Adelaide and Murray Bridge team.
The Riverland team took the win, two matches to one.
State MPs Adrian Pederick and Tung Ngo even pitched in.
There was also a musical chairs competition with a $100 prize.
Performers, contestants and speakers take turns in the spotlight at the festival. Photos: Peri Strathearn.
Festival preserves language and culture
The festival was about more than just socialising, one of the event’s MCs said.
It was intended to make sure Punjabi culture would live on in the next generation of Punjabi-Australians.
Too many children no longer spoke the Punjabi language.
Personal trainer and influencer Kamaldip Kahma, visiting from Melbourne, put a positive spin on that sentiment.
Where once Punjabi people had come to Australia and worked hard with a dream of returning to visit their ancestors’ homeland, now they were able to share in their own culture here.
Events like the mela were getting bigger and bigger, he said.
He credited the organising committee, including Murray Bridge resident Jagtar Singh Nagri.
There were almost 240,000 Punjabi speakers around Australia at the time of the 2021 census, making the language one of the most common in the country aside from English.
Australia’s Punjabi population has also been one of our nation’s fastest-growing immigrant groups in recent years, increasing 10 times over since 2006.
Punjab, known for millennia as the land of the five rivers, has been divided between India and Pakistan since 1947.
Disclosure: The author was gifted with a plaque as a token of appreciation for Murray Bridge News’ coverage of the event. We have used translation software to capture the gist of the messages shared by speakers at the event.
