Indira Ekadashi 2027: 26 September Date and Parana

Indira Ekadashi in 2027 is Sunday, 26 September 2027, and the fast is broken on Monday the 27th. It is the one Ekadashi of Pitru Paksha, the fortnight families set aside for shraddha, so for households that keep both, this Sunday carries two observances at once: the Ekadashi fast, and the shraddha for relatives who died on an Ekadashi. This year both point to the same day. Below, each part of that is worked out from the site’s own tables, city by city.

Late Saturday Night to Sunday Evening: The Tithi (इंदिरा एकादशी)

Indira’s tithi, the Krishna Ekadashi, starts at 22:31 on 25 September and runs until 19:50 on 26 September. There is no Indira row in the generated festival tables, so these two instants are the site’s lunar code at work. Checked against the 86 tithi instants that the DE421 tables do carry, that code has never been off by more than 1 minute.

Read at sunrise in New Delhi, the daily table gives Krishna Dashami on Saturday the 25th (06:10), Krishna Ekadashi on Sunday the 26th (06:11) and Krishna Dwadashi on Monday the 27th (06:11). The 26th is the only dawn that falls inside the Ekadashi, and that is true in all 38 panchang cities: at the latest sunrise on the list the tithi still has more than twelve hours to go. The Krishna Dashami before it begins at 00:55 on 25 September, ahead of that morning’s sunrise, and it is not displaced until more than three hours after every city’s sunset on the 25th. So the whole of Saturday is Dashami, which settles the simple meal some families take on the eve.

Calendars in the Hari Bhakti Vilasa line add an arunodaya test, rejecting an Ekadashi that still has Dashami in the hour and a half or so (96 minutes) before sunrise. That test cannot bite here. The tithi arrives before midnight, and when arunodaya opens on the 26th it is more than four hours old even in Guwahati, where that lead is shortest. Smarta and Vaishnava almanacs land on the same Sunday.

The Afternoon Test: Ekadashi Shraddha and the Fast on One Day

In the shraddha custom that the Dharmashastra manuals set out for Pitru Paksha, each tithi of the fortnight is the day for those who died on that tithi, and the tithi that counts is the one current in the aparahna, the afternoon part of the day. That is a different question from the fast, which goes by sunrise, and the two need not land on the same day. The site’s festival generator already has an aparahna rule, used for Dussehra: it divides the daylight into five equal parts and takes the fourth. This page applies that division, and requires the whole fourth part, not just one point in it, to lie inside the tithi.

On Sunday the 26th the Ekadashi holds the whole of that afternoon part in every one of the 38 cities. That afternoon part opens more than thirteen hours into the tithi and closes more than three hours before the tithi ends; the tightest end margin is in Ahmedabad. The afternoon before cannot compete: on Saturday the 25th the aparahna lies inside Krishna Dashami everywhere, and the Ekadashi does not start until well after dark. Since the tithi touches only one afternoon, there is nothing to choose between. On this test the Ekadashi shraddha and the Indira fast fall on the same day in 2027.

This page gives no clock window for the aparahna; it only reports which tithi covers it. How a household orders the shraddha and the fast on the same day, and what is offered, is for its own purohit and family custom. The page says nothing about what the rite does for the ancestors.

Still Ekadashi After Sunset on the 26th

The tithi outlasts the daylight of the fast day. In New Delhi the sun sets at 18:13 on the 26th and the Ekadashi has 1 hour 37 minutes left after that. The margin is smallest in Ahmedabad, where the sun is down at 18:32 and 1 hour 18 minutes of the tithi remain, and largest in Guwahati, at 2 hours 35 minutes. No city comes within 30 minutes of the line, so every one of them spends the evening of the 26th in the Ekadashi, and the Krishna Dwadashi only arrives some time after nightfall.

How strictly the day is kept varies from one family to another, from giving up grain to going without food and water until the parana; the Ekadashi vrat niyam page sets out the usual forms. Anyone who has a medical condition, is pregnant or takes regular medication should talk to a doctor before fasting.

Hari Vasara Ends Overnight, Leaving a Long Monday Parana (पारण)

The Krishna Dwadashi runs from 19:50 on 26 September to 16:56 on 27 September. Vrat manuals hold the fast through Hari Vasara, the opening quarter of the Dwadashi, before the parana may begin. This year that quarter closes in the small hours of the 27th, after midnight, and in every city it is over more than three hours before the sun rises. The smallest lead is in Guwahati. When Monday dawns, Hari Vasara is no longer a constraint anywhere on the list.

The other limit is the end of Dwadashi at 16:56, in the afternoon. From the 06:11 sunrise in New Delhi that leaves 10 hours 45 minutes. Because the tithi ends at one instant for the whole country while sunrise does not, the window is shortest in Ahmedabad (10 hours 27 minutes from a 06:29 sunrise) and longest in Guwahati (11 hours 43 minutes from 05:13). Every city has more than nine hours, although the custom is to break the fast in the morning rather than wait. Only New Delhi’s day is computed by the panchang calculator; each other city’s sunrise and sunset sit on the city panchang pages.

Bhadrapada Krishna or Ashwina Krishna

Each dark-fortnight Ekadashi has two month names, and Indira is no exception. The lunation it belongs to begins with the new moon at 23:11 on 31 August, when the Sun is in sidereal Leo. Amanta calendars name a month by the Sun’s sign at its opening new moon, and a Leo new moon opens Bhadrapada; the site’s festival rules agree, filing Ganesh Chaturthi on 4 September, in the bright half of this lunation, as Bhadrapada shukla. In those calendars, used in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra, Indira is the Bhadrapada Krishna Ekadashi, and Bhadrapada lasts until the new moon at 08:06 on 30 September.

Purnimanta calendars, the usual reckoning in north India, start each month at a full moon. The full moon at 04:33 on 16 September, ten days before the fast, opens their Ashwina, so the same day appears there as Ashwina Krishna Ekadashi. The tithi and the date are the same in both systems, and the Bhadrapada 2027 page shows where each version of the month starts and ends.

Inside the Fortnight of the Ancestors

The site’s 2027 festival table opens Pitru Paksha with the Bhadrapada Purnima on Wednesday 15 September (Pitru Paksha 2027) and closes it with Sarva Pitru Amavasya on Thursday 30 September. Indira comes eleven days after the first and four days before the second. No other Ekadashi sunrise falls anywhere in the fortnight.

The fortnight’s last day is a crowded one in 2027. The Amavasya is the tithi at the 06:13 sunrise on the 30th, but it ends at 08:06 that same morning, and the Shukla Pratipada of Ashwina that begins then is the one the table uses for the start of Sharad Navratri. So the last day of Pitru Paksha and the first day of Navratri share a date, four days after Indira. The nine days are set out on the Navratri 2027 page. The next dark-fortnight Ekadashi after Indira is Rama Ekadashi on 25 October, which in 2027 has a Smarta and a Vaishnava date; the Rama Ekadashi 2027 page explains the split.

King Indrasena of Mahishmati: The Vrat Katha

The story told for this Ekadashi is credited in the vrat books to the Brahmavaivarta Purana. In it, Indrasena rules the city of Mahishmati and is visited by the sage Narada, who brings him word of his father, now dead, and describes this Ekadashi and the way it is to be kept, beginning on the Dashami. The king keeps it with his household as Narada instructs. The katha’s ending concerns the father, and that ending belongs to the text. This page passes on the story as the katha’s and makes no claim about what keeping the fast does for anyone, living or dead.

Indira Ekadashi 2027 in Brief

• Fast: Sunday 26 September 2027, Smarta and Vaishnava alike
• Ekadashi (computed): 22:31 on 25 September to 19:50 on 26 September
• Aparahna of 26 September: inside the Ekadashi in all 38 cities; the afternoon of 25 September is Krishna Dashami
• Parana: Monday 27 September 2027, from sunrise (06:11 in New Delhi) while Dwadashi lasts, until 16:56
• Month: Bhadrapada Krishna Ekadashi (amanta); Ashwina Krishna Ekadashi (purnimanta)
• New Delhi on 26 September: sunrise 06:11, sunset 18:13, nakshatra at sunrise Pushya

The year’s other fasts are on the Ekadashi 2027 list, and the month’s observances on the September 2027 festival list. For everything else there is the 2027 festival calendar. In Hindi: इंदिरा एकादशी 2027: 26 सितम्बर की तारीख और पारण.