Holi Festival

Holi

The most lively of all Hindu festivals is observed on the day after full moon in the month of Phagun (sometime in March) according to the Hindu Lunar calendar. It heralds the end of the winter and the beginning of the spring. North India, in particular, goes wild, goes wild, with people smearing brightly hued powders on each other and squirting each other with coloured water from pichkaris.

Holi is also a harvest festival, marking harvesting of the winter crop (rabi). Farmers celebrate Holi by offering their first crop to Agni, the Fire God.

The night before full moon, huge ceremonial bonfires are lit in a re-enactment of the legend of Holika and Prahlad. Holika was the sister of Hirankashyap, the demon king of the Asuras. He fancied himself to be the Supreme Being and ordered his people to worship him. However, his son, Prahlad, an ardent devotee of Lord Vishnu, refused to do so. Holika had been granted a boon that provided her protection against fire, so Hirankashyap asked her to sit on a burning pyre with Prahlad in her lap. She did just that, but it was Prahlad who walked out of the pyre unharmed, while Holika was burnt.

At Mathura and Vrindavan, the places where Lord Krishna spent most of his childhood, Holi is celebrated with great gusto - The Rang Gulal Festival is celebrated for over a week with exuberant processions, songs, music and dance. In Maharashtra and Gujarat, a grand procession of men soaked with coloured water walks through the streets shouting Govinda Aala Re (here comes Govinda). In Manipur, Holi is a six-day festival. In Anandpur Sahib, Punjab, Sikhs celebrate a special festival, Hola Mohalla, on the day after Holi. Mock battles and the display of the skills of the Nihang Sikhs (traditional members of the Sikh army founded by Guru Gobind Singh) are a key attraction of this unique festival.