For Mela Festivals today, see Mela Festival.

For the Bollywood movie, see Mela.

Mela is a Sanskrit word meaning get together. In Hindi and Urdu it refers to a rural or a village fair. It is fairly common in rural India. Mela Festival are the multicultural events which have their roots in the traditional Asian Mela. ... Bollywood (Devanāgarī: बॉलीवुड, Nastaliq: بالیوڈ) is the informal name given to the popular Mumbai-based Hindi language film industry in India. ... Mela is a 2000 Bollywood movie directed by Dharmesh Darshan. ... Sanskrit ( , ) is a classical language of India, a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 23 official languages of India. ...

In modern usage in the United Kingdom it has become a term for a multicultural (though mainly Asian) festival incorporating music, dance, food and other aspects of British Asian culture in the UK. The term British Asian is used to denote a person of South Asian ancestry or origin, who was born in or was an immigrant to the United Kingdom, former heartland of the British Empire. ...

Melas regularly are held in larger towns in the UK, especially in areas with large ethnic minority populations. They are often considered important as a way of improving relations between the "indigenous" (white) UK population and the Asian population. The Melas began in the 1990s.

Public money is sometimes available for these festivals. They have also been seen as a way of ensuring that festivals are available for the whole population. (The Arts Council produced a study on this examining eleven festivals in the Leicester region).

Mela, first name. Mela Tenenbaum

External links

• What's On, Mela News, Listings and Mela Festival Information.
• BBC list of UK Melas in 2004

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Mela is derived from Sanskrit, meaning coming together. The term is used for gatherings organised in Indian towns and villages. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1024x683, 508 KB) Summary http://www. ... A festival is an event, usually staged by a local community, which centers on some unique aspect of that community. ...