Holi Festival In India: Celebration Of Colors And Cultures

History and Significance of Holi Festival

Holi is the most favourite festival in India which brings lots of joy and happiness through its colours. This festival comprises of different languages, different religion, and mostly the different cultures (Batabyal & Das, 2019). The Holi festival is celebrated every year, especially by the Hindu religion, as this is a very important festival to them. This festival falls during the impending session of spring season probably in the month of March (or in the month of Phalgun). People from a different religion or from different races mostly wait for this particular time for this festival with lots of enthusiasm, happiness along with special preparations for this festival. This essay will cover the world religion on the aspect of the festival Holi (Das et al., 2015).

The day before the Holi festival is a ritual called ‘Holika Dahan’ which is conducted in a large heap of bonfire which is burned in cities and villages. This ritual of ‘Holika Dahan’ symbolizes the burning of evil and along with the burning of all the negative power (Gupta et al., 2015). This ‘Holika-Dahan’ ritual also re-experienced the story of Holika, who was the evil sister of Hiranyakaskyap who tried to kill his nephew Prahlad by sitting on to the bonfire (Jain et al., 2015). But by the God’s grace Holika who had a boon of immortality was burned to ashes and Prahlad was saved unharmed. People also make rounds of Holika while chanting the devotional mantras and singing bhajans to seek health and prosperity.

After ‘Holika Dahan’, everybody celebrates the colourful festival of Holi while meeting together at a particular place and throwing colours to each other playfully (Jain, 2019). This Holi festival preparations start before a week at the main festival. Every People, especially children, are highly enthusiastic about this particular date.  They start with the enjoyment by buying different colours a week before the day of Holi festival. There is a great story of Prahlad behind the Holi celebration. One day Prahlad’s father had tried to kill his own son, who was a devotee of God, had denied worshiping his father rather worship the Almighty. Prahlad’s aunt named Holika was sitting once into the fire by holding Prahlad in her lap. She had maintained an order which was given by Prahlad’s father to sit with Prahlad. As a result Prahlad was saved without any harm by the grace of God. Prahlad had proved himself as a true and holy devotee of God. Prahlad’s aunt Holika was scorched totally in the fire although she had a blessing or grace of God never to get harmed by the fire (Kumar et al., 2015). From that day onwards, people following Hinduism celebrate this holy occasion of Holi every year to cherish or to recall the victory of good over the evil.

Rituals and Traditions Associated with Holi Celebration

Before the day of Holi festival, people burn a pile of wooden sticks and cow dung cakes in the evening on that day resembling the burning of Holika to reminisce that day. In contemporary society, everybody plays the Holi by splashing water colors on each other. Children throw water colours by using water cannons or ‘pichkari’ to enjoy the festival (Masavkar et al., 2017). In the evening, people dress up in attractive attire and visit their friends and relatives and hug them by applying ‘gulal’ or ‘abir’, the dry colours. People also sing folk songs and dance to the tune of famous Holi songs. Every people celebrate this Holi festival playfully with great enthusiasm. People start playing ‘Holi’ with various colours with their mates, surrounded neighbours and with relatives with ‘pichkari’ and small balloons. The Holi celebration gets started in the morning when people with lots of colours visit their friends and relatives and colour them. Holi delicacies comprise of ‘Gujhiya’, Sweets, ‘Pani Puri’, ‘Dahi bade’, Chips and many more food items which are enjoyed by the guests and as well as by the hosts.

Holi is not only the festival of Hindus but also for all the religions. Holi is not like the other festival of different religion which has a particular religious zeal of any deity (PATIL et al., 2019). The festival calls for pure joy, love with no religious obligations what so ever. It is very difficult to imagine Holi celebrations without colours. In fact, this festival also called- the festival of colours. People mostly play with coloured powders which are locally called ‘gulal’. They spray gulal on their friends and family members, greeting each other by saying “Happy Holi” and hugging each other. Children could be seen playing in groups with various types of water guns (pichkari).

During the time of Holi, the houses and streets all get coloured with a combination of beautiful and bright red, yellow, blue, orange and violet. With the chilly winds of winter gone, people wear lose clothes and sprinkle each other with colours and coloured water (Prabhu et al., 2016). Everyone is painted in different colours from tip to toe; so much so, that it takes a moment or two to recognize even one’s closest friend.

Holi is basically a two days festival. It gets started by the beginning on the evening of a full moon day (which is called ‘Purnima’ in local terms) in the Hindu month of Phalgun (Saddiqa et al., 2019). The colour of Holi is played on the second day morning. The first day of Holi is called ‘Choti’ Holi (which means Small), and a ritual of Holika Dahan is conducted in the evening. Bonfires are made at every street junctions or other at some suitable places in the market, roads, streets, colonies and so on. During that time People burn their old belongings into the fire. The significance of burning their belongings are the feelings of their enmity, hatred and the acrimony. This ritual also signifies the victory of good over the evil demons respectively.

Symbolism of Holika Dahan in Holi Festival

The Holi festival has many positive and good effects on the personality of an individual as well as their social relations. It is a festival to throw away the shyness of an individual and create a suitable bonding with new friends. This festival could be a better way to make new friends. The festival helps every person to identify their inner joy, which had been lying suppressed inside themselves. The rejection of their shyness, hesitation and all the emotions that have been holding them back in daily life could be abolished by this colourful festival (Shivhare & Rastogi, 2016). With just a little effort from the inside, a person will create or make a new world of colour, love and joy. In this way spraying colour on whoever, without any hesitation will make a new friendship with happiness and enthusiasm. This Holi celebration is the best festival which is surely remembered by every individual that how they had celebrated it in the last year.

During the time of Holi festival, lots of temporary shops could be seen selling different types of colours to the people. Basically, all the colours are available in the form of powder often constitute with the toxic metals like copper, mercury, aluminium and lead. All those colours may also contain some harmful dyes and paints, which is not suitable for use by humans (Singh et al., 2017). The use of those cheap synthetic colours results in a considerable number of ailments, ranging from mild skin rashes to as severe case like cancer. Some of the examples of skin lesions, burning sensation and eye irritation are also reported during the time of Holi festival, possibly due to the toxic compounds which had been mixed with the colours. The synthetic colours are sometimes prepared with the base of corn starch or flour, whose dangerous toxic along with the impurities items make the situation worst. Fortunately, in the present scenario, people are getting more conscious about the harmful effects or ill-effects of the artificial colours. Concerning this matter, a custom of using naturally derived colours is developing day by day and it is being practised wide manner. By choosing those colours derived from natural resources, people not only save their health but also they are saving the environment simultaneously. When the natural colours are coming out from the soil or water resources, it does not pollute them like the synthetic colours do (Stieler & Germelmann, 2016). All the Natural colours are derived from the natural, harmless minerals like gulal, Mehendi, turmeric etc. Apart from natural resources, flowers are also used to make the colours, like the red colour is produced from the roses, the simultaneously yellow colour is produced from sunflower. Apart from this, many natural colours can be produced from plants and flowers.

Importance of Prahlad in Holi Festival

Into the premise of Radha-Rani temple at Barsana, which is a small town near Mathura, another famous ritual of ‘Lath- Mar- Holi’ is being celebrated for the past few decades. People from the countryside or nearby places like Nandgaon, visit Barsana where the women would hit them with sticks, which are traditionally called ‘lathis’ in Hindi (Wilson et al., 2017). On the other hand, men would protect themselves with shields, and those who got caught are made to dance wearing women attire which is the more attractive part of this ritual. Nowadays, the Lath-Mar- Holi of Barsana has become very popular, and millions of people along with the native Indians as well as foreign tourists are also visiting Barsana to watch this celebration.

Therefore, Holi is a festival of colour, which is celebrated every year with happiness, fun and joy. Get ready to drench in water and colour, but also be careful not to harm yourself and others. Open your mind, shed your inhibitions, make new friends, pacify the unhappy ones and repair broken relationships. While playing the Holi, always be playful as well as be sensitive to others. One ought to keep it in mind

to not to harm anyone unnecessarily and always keep your conduct composed. Finally the last but not the least, which is to take a resolve to play only with the natural colours in Holi.

From the above discussion, it has been concluded that the festival of colours is celebrated with the joy, happiness and dedication to all the religion. The main theme of celebrating this Holi festival is to celebrate the grand victory of good over evil. The way of celebrating the Holi festival is based upon religion. It is also analyzed that the beliefs of people are converting into myths because of this festival which may cause harm to the environment and the resources.

Contrary to the negative impact, Holi sprays the colour towards all the people of different classes, different groups, and different religion. There is no class division, no contrast, and no religious aspect. This festival is the celebration for every individual. Holi festival is the symbol of togetherness. This festival is celebrated all over the globe, and it is considered as one of the best festival in India. 

References

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