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Holi: Meaning, Traditions, and Importance
Holi, also known as the Festival of Colours, is one of India’s most vibrant and meaningful celebrations. People from all nations, beliefs, and origins gather to celebrate the end of winter and the entrance of spring. Beyond the colorful celebrations, Holi symbolizes the triumph of good over evil and the unifying power of joy, forgiveness, and love.
Holi Festival is celebrated on the last full moon day of the lunar month of (Phalguna), which is generally around the end of March. The exact date of Holi may vary from year to year.
Holi is celebrated around the world, not only in India. This colorful event lasts several days and is full with music, dance, sweets, and fun.
The spring festival, which commemorates the triumph of virtue over evil, signals the end of winter.
To celebrate, people pray, apply colorful colors to family and friends, and enjoy traditional foods and sweets. They also assemble on the streets to throw colors at each other.
Holi is based on the Hindu legend of Holika, a female demon who attempts to kill her nephew Prahlad for worshiping the Hindu god Vishnu. But Prahlad miraculously survives the raging fire, while Holika is engulfed by the flames.
The evening before Holi, people burn bonfires in the idea that this will eliminate the bad and allow the good to win.
Many adherents think that the event celebrates the heavenly love of the Hindu deities Radha and Krishna. Mathura and Vrindavan, both in northern India, have colorful events commemorating Krishna’s birth and childhood.
Music is important as people celebrate Holi by dancing to traditional and film songs while throwing colours.
Children use toy pistols and dispensers to squirt colored water at their pals.
On this day, a traditional beverage called thandai is served, which is a milk-based drink sweetened with dry fruits.
Holi is also widely celebrated in Nepal, where Hindus make up the bulk of the population.
The Holi Festival is energetic, with large crowds, colorful dye, water guns, music, dancing, and partying. During the Holi Festival, people dance in the streets and fling colored dye at one another. The Holi Festival is a joyful occasion in which people come together as one and let go of their inhibitions.
Regional variations
Holi ceremonies vary across India, lasting anywhere from 40 days to just two days. Perhaps the most prevalent practice is the starting of a bonfire to depict the burning of Holika, also known as Holika Dahan in North India. In South India, the rite is known as Kama Dahanam and is related with the Shiva-Kama tale.
In modern-day Barsana, in the Vraja, or Braj, region of Uttar Pradesh state, celebrations include a unique, lighthearted combat in which the women of Radha’s birth village, Krishna’s eternally devoted lover, pound the men of Krishna’s village with staves while the men defend themselves with shields. This ceremony is known as Lathmar Holi (lath means “stave” in Hindi). In fact, in Barsana, as well as neighboring Mathura and Vrindavan in Braj, Holi celebrations begin with Basant Panchami, a Hindu festival celebrating the onset of spring in the month of Magha, and run for 40 days, concluding on the last day of Holi. Through this period, Holi is celebrated with flowers, staves and shields, and colors. Phulera Dooj, a day when Holi is celebrated with flowers, is considered to be an auspicious day.
In Baldeo, in Uttar Pradesh state not far from Vrindavan, Holi is associated not with Krishna but with his brother, Balarama. In the account of Krishna’s exploits in the Bhagavata Purana, Krishna departs Vrindavan with Balarama, leaving the gopis heartsick for Krishna. According to the story in the Garga Samhita, when Balarama returns on Holi, without Krishna, he is regaled by the people in festivity, he dances with the gopis, and he diverts the Yamuna River. Balarama’s diversion of the Yamuna to flood the fields suggests an association of the festival with agriculture.
True to the spirit of Holi and breaking away from norms, the not-for-profit organization Sulabh International seeks to help widows in Vrindavan and Varanasi, where thousands of them live in shelters, to break free from restrictive practices. Following orthodox norms and lacking resources, these widows, most of whom were abandoned by their families, often live a life sans color and festivities. In 2013, after India’s National Legal Services Authority filed a public-interest litigation to draw the Supreme Court’s attention to the widows’ poor living conditions in Vrindavan’s shelters, the court directed Sulabh International to provide better care for the widows. As a part of its holistic intervention program to improve their living conditions, Sulabh International encouraged the widows to celebrate Holi with colors and flowers. Two years later Sulabh International organized Holi celebrations for widows in the shelters of Varanasi. Since then, widows in the shelters of Vrindavan and Varanasi have been celebrating the joyous festival of colors.
Adherents of Sikhism in Punjab, another state in North India, celebrate Holla Mohalla (“The Charge of an Army”) on the day after Holi. Instituted by Guru Gobind Singh, the festival consists of weeklong displays of Sikh martial arts, archery, gymnastics, riding, fencing, and music as well as community meals.
In eastern India, particularly West Bengal and Odisha, Holi is celebrated as Dolayatra (“Swing Festival,” also known as Dol Jatra or Dol Purnima). Images of Radha and Krishna are put on adorned platforms and swung to the tune of spring-time song cycles. In other regions, the images are transported in a palanquin. The celebration is known as Basanta Utsav (“Spring Festival”) in Shantiniketan, the hometown of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, who founded the tradition of celebrating spring. Students and lecturers at Visva-Bharati, Tagore’s university, apply colored powders known as abeer to one another and celebrate with music and jubilant cultural acts.
The Meitei community in the northeastern state of Manipur celebrates Yaoshang (yao meaning “sheep”, shang meaning “hut”) over a period of five days. The festival involves playing with colors, burning a thatched hut at dusk, and dancing the thabal chongba (“moonlight dance”), the region’s traditional folk dance.
Some communities in Maharashtra celebrate Holi across two days, as is customary in northern India, with Holika Dahan the day before, when bonfires are lit. The day after Holika Dahan is known as Dhulivandan (“Paying Tribute to Dust”), and mud is utilized instead of colored powders. Rang Panchami, which is celebrated five days after Holika Dahan, involves people smearing colored powders on each other. Rang Panchami is also celebrated in areas of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Rajasthan. Holi is known as Shimga or Shigmotsav in the Konkan region, which includes the coastal states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Goa, and celebrations can linger for up to a fortnight. People believe that God visits their homes on Holi, so brightly colored palanquins with local deities are carried in processions and brought to people’s homes. Goa celebrates the festival in a carnival-like spirit, with colorful parades involving folk dances, vibrant tableaux depicting themes from Hindu scriptures and epics, and mammoth mythological figures mounted on floats.
In the southern parts of the country, Holi is celebrated in a perhaps more muted way, or not at all, compared with northern India’s zealous festivities. South Indian observances on this day are generally associated with the Shiva and Kama story. In Tamil Nadu state, it is known as Kaman Pandigai, Kama Vilas, or Kama Dahanam and features songs of lament from the perspective of Rati. In Kerala state, people celebrate Manjal Kuli by offering prayers in temples and by showering one another with turmeric-colored water.
During the colonial era, Indo-Caribbean communities who migrated from India to the Caribbean basin brought with them the Holi festival, which they named Phagwah. Indo-Caribbeans in the United States, particularly those from Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname, have a sizable group in Queens, New York, and their Phagwah festival is renowned for incorporating New York City’s diverse culture. The participation of non-Hindus in Holi events, which ignore all differences, enables diaspora Hindus to joyfully integrate with their larger groups, and vice versa.
