Ganesh Visarjan 2025: From 'Don' to 'Sarkar 3,' Here Are Bollywood's Most Memorable Ganpati Festival Moments

Today, Maharashtra will yet again surrender its streets to the festivities and traffic snarls for Ganesh Visarjan day. While we could all do without the decibels and the detours, it’s impossible to deny that Ganpati in Maharashtra is more than just a festival. For a few days every year, class and caste hierarchies blur into the crowd, and everyone from the city’s strugglers to its power brokers becomes part of the same, booming chorus.

This wasn’t always the case. In 1893, Lokmanya Tilak saw the potential of the elephant-headed deity as a tool of mass mobilisation, of becoming a cultural equaliser. By moving Ganesh worship from the family courtyard to the street corner, he transformed a private ritual into a public spectacle, one strong enough to foster unity and, not incidentally, to needle the British. Later, in the 1930s, Veer Savarkar would use the festival to chip away at caste barriers, opening Ratnagiri’s Patit Pavan Mandir to all communities and making worship into an act of caste rebellion.

Bollywood, of course, took this theme of rebellion and ran with it. On screen, Ganpati pandals are rarely about piety. They’re auspicious façades that conveniently mask mob hits, betrayals, political plotting or, at the very least, a hero’s existential meltdown. If Durga Puja in Kolkata is cinema’s go-to backdrop for baroque drama, Ganpati in Mumbai is where filmmakers let their characters dance, duel and self-destruct under the cover of deafening drums.

So, in the spirit of the visarjan — messy, contradictory, and never not cinematic — here are five memorable Bollywood Ganpati moments, a reminder that the god of wisdom has long doubled as a plot device for organised chaos.

1. Don (2006)

If Bollywood has a default setting of slick plus shady, Don dials it up under the colour of the Ganpati celebration. Shah Rukh Khan’s Don slinks through the crowd, and escapes the cops during ‘Mourya Re’ as the most wanted criminal seeks cover in the frenzy of this beloved festival.

2. Agneepath (2012)

Few things are more combustible than Hrithik Roshan’s revenge arc — and setting him loose during Ganpati fever is the equivalent of cinematic nitroglycerin. ‘Deva Shree Ganesha’ brings a thunder of drums and a rain of flowers as Vijay Dinanath Chauhan’s fury finally detonates, turning ritual into reckoning. In Agneepath, the festival becomes a stage for righteous violence.

3. Bajirao Mastani (2015)

Sanjay Leela Bhansali never met a festival he couldn’t turn into an opera, and Ganpati in Bajirao Mastani is no exception. While Bajirao is absorbed in the pooja, the Peshwas seize the moment to rid themselves of the “problem” that is Mastani. During ‘Gajanana,’ Mastani, luminous and lethal, fights off attackers with the ferocity of a flame that refuses to die out. The sanctity of ritual collides with the clang of swords, creating visual poetry at its most contradictory — auspicious and violent.

4. Vaastav (1999)

If ever there was a scene where faith and fate entwine, it’s Raghu’s end at visarjan. Sanjay Dutt’s gangster dissolves into myth as the idol is immersed: devotion sinking, life ebbing, city crowds swallowing him whole. The parallel is brutal and deliberate — Raghu disappears as completely as the god he prayed to. It’s haunting, tragic, and one of Bollywood’s most memorable juxtapositions of faith and futility.

5. Sarkar 3 (2017)

If Ganpati is meant to dissolve ego, Ram Gopal Varma flips the script in Sarkar 3 by inflating it. Pompous, choreographed processions, and hollow blessings form the perfect theatre for political machinations. Assassins open fire at Sarkar, alliances crack, knives sharpen, and power swaps hands. The festival becomes a smokescreen for backroom deals and dangerous politics.