ಇಂದಿರಾ ಏಕಾದಶಿ | Indira Ekadashi

Indira Ekadashi is the eleventh tithi of the dark fortnight of Bhadrapada in the amanta reckoning, and of Ashwina in the purnimanta almanacs. Its position is what gives it its character: it falls inside the Mahalaya paksha, the fortnight given to the ancestors that closes at Mahalaya Amavasya.

What is distinctive

Of the twenty four this is the one whose merit is explicitly directed at the departed rather than at the person keeping it. The mahatmya is from the Brahmavaivarta Purana. Indrasena, king of Mahishmati, was told by Narada that his father had fallen from the higher worlds and was held in Yama’s realm; keeping this vrata, and making over its fruit, would release him. The phala said to follow is the release of a forebear who has fallen, and the day is kept with that intention where it is kept at all.

This fits the fortnight it sits in, and the two should still not be confused. The shraddha of the Mahalaya paksha is performed on the tithi of a forebear’s death and follows its own rules. Indira Ekadashi is a vrata with a fast, not a shraddha, and it does not replace one.

Where the two meet

A household whose shraddha tithi falls on this ekadashi has a genuine question, because a shraddha involves cooked food and an ekadashi involves a fast. Practice differs. Some families perform the shraddha and keep the fast, taking their own share of the shraddha food on the dwadashi; some move the vrata; some follow the rule their purohita gives for their sampradaya. There is no single answer that can honestly be printed here, and a family in that position should ask their own purohita rather than a calendar.

Otherwise the fast, the reckoning of the tithi and the parana are the general rules on the Ekadashi page.