What are the facts about Holi that people are unaware of? What is Holi? In a nutshell, it is a festival of colours and happiness, but is it really so? The response is a resounding no! Holi is more than just a festival of colours.
What Is The Origin Story Of Holi?
Who celebrates Holi? It is a festival of the Hindus, and it is supposed to celebrate by the Shudras. Let us do a quick revision on its origins.
Hiranyakashyapu, a demon king, was outraged by his son Prahlad’s fervent devotion to Lord Vishnu. Holika was the demon king’s sister. When Hiranyakashyapu decided to punish his son, he enlisted the help of his sister.
Holika was fire-resistant. She leads the tiny kid into flames, but she is destroyed by a divine intervention, saving Prahlad from being burned. Holi is said to commemorate the burning of the evil Holika by some.
Historically, “burning” Dalit-Bahujan women were viewed as a patriarchal and Brahmanical practice—which, unfortunately, and unbeknownst to many, is still prevalent in modern-day India.
Holi is a holiday founded on Bahujan burning, as mentioned by K Jamnadas in his piece on Round Table India, titled: Holi – A Festival To Commemorate Bahujan Burning. In the same piece, Jamnadas discusses how the festivities surrounding this day are linked to Hiranyakashyapu in a roundabout way.
The one similarity in the different versions of the festival’s story—which involves burning a pyre one evening and celebrating with colours the next—is that it was part of Narasimha’s (one of Vishnu’s incarnations) plan to save Prahlad’s life.
Prahlad had accepted Narasimha as the one, real God, and had become well-known as a fervent disciple of his. This did not sit well with the asura (demon) king Hiranyakashyapu, who feverishly plotted the assassination of his own son.
One such effort was when he sent his sister Holika for the hit job, who used a special blanket to protect herself from the fire while forcing Prahlad to sit in a burning pyre with her. Prahlad’s prayers to Narasimha kept him safe while Holika burned to death.
The Caste System And Its Supposedly Divine Origins
The burning of Holika is what we commemorate on Holi. A Bahujan woman. In the early Vedic period (1,500-500 BCE), people were identified as per their professional practices.
But, as we see in the later Vedic Period (1,000-600 BC), the concept of casteism (or a hierarchical system) takes its place. It becomes quite different in terms of equations.
‘Raja ka beta raja hoga!’ (a king’s son will become a king) was established by then. The caste system, according to traditional theory, has divine origins. It claims that the caste system is an outgrowth of the varna system, with the four varnas descended from different parts of Brahma’s body.
- The traditional theory: The Brahmins, who descended from Brahma’s head, and were mostly teachers and thinkers, were at the apex of the hierarchy. His arms produced Kshatriyas, or warriors and rulers. His thighs gave birth to Vaishyas, or traders and merchants. The Shudras, who descended from Brahma’s foot, were at the bottom of the ladder.
The mouth denotes its use for preaching, learning, etc. The arms– protection; the thighs–cultivation or business; and the feet–assistance to the entire body.
Therefore, it was said that the Shudras’ mission is to serve people from all the other varnas. Proponents of this hypothesis reference the purusha sukta from the “Rigveda”, “Manusmriti”, and other such texts to back their claims.
- The racial theory: Varna, which means colour in Sanskrit, is the name denoting the caste. The chatur varna (four varnas) system—Brahmins, Kashtriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras–is where the Indian society’s caste stratification began.
The caste system arose after the arrival of Aryans in India, according to Indian sociologist DN Majumdar in his book “Races and Culture in India.”
According to Rig Vedic literature, the Aryans and non-Aryans (dasa) had substantial distinctions in their complexion, speech, religious rituals and physical traits.
During the Vedic period, the varna system was based primarily on labour division and profession. The Rig Veda regularly refers to the three classes of Brahma, Kshatra, and Vis.
The poet-priest and the warrior-chief were represented by Brahma and Kshatra. Vis was the collective name for the ordinary people. The Rig Veda only mentions the fourth class once, as the “Sudra“. Sudras were household servants.
Who Can Determine The Cultural Agenda?
As mentioned in political theory, the caste system was created by the Brahmins as a smart method to elevate themselves to the top of the social hierarchy.
“Caste is a Brahminic offspring of Indo-Aryan civilization nursed in the Ganges land and then transmitted to other parts of India,” says sociologist Dr GS Ghurye.
In order to gain the favour of the ruler of the land, the Brahmins created the concept of the king’s spiritual merit, which was channelled through the purohit (priest).
According to the racial theory of caste, a foreign race entered India and became the Brahmin elite, whilst the peoples they conquered and enslaved became the “lower castes”.
The Vedic and Puranic myths that define Hindu festivals are based on suppressing the story of the “lower” castes (Dalit-Bahujans), and it is they who are represented as asuras, according to a refashioning of this thesis that began with mahatma Jyotiba Phule’s seminal work “Slavery”.
This refashioning is part of a larger effort to challenge dominant cultural constructions—constructs that have the mission of marginalising the marginalised lives built into them.
“One cannot consider it as stupidity or lack of awareness when a group of Dalit, Adivasi, and Bahujan students (along with some Christian, Muslim, Atheists, and others) attempt to project Asura-Dravidian cultural and identity symbols, along with declaring their pride in being Asura,” writes scholar Reju George Mathew.
What matters more is that the context in which these new cultural standards are to be implemented, is understood. And, it is apparent that determining the cultural agenda cannot remain a prerogative reserved for the upper caste.
Oppression And Brutality Are Still Being Practiced
There are dozens of Brahmanical myths that allude to a group of individuals as daityas, asuras, danavas and rakshasas as malevolent embodiments. The devatas, who have historically been venerated and worshipped by the Brahmins, oppress, brutalise, and conquer them.
Whether it’s the churning of the amrit (nectar of immortality) episode, where Vishnu, in the avatar of Mohini, betrays the asuras by serving the amrit to the devatas; the slaying of Shambhuka by Ram during Ram rajya (rule); or Dasyus’ triumph, this subject continues to reappear.
The conquest and infiltration of the Brahmin–Baniya (merchant) class in the Dandakaranya region around Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and south Odisha can be seen as a parallel in continuity.
By labelling the adivasis as uncivilised and barbaric, they not only occupied lands, plundered resources through state administration and corporate companies, but also brutalised and subjugated them through operations such as the Salwa Judum in Chattisgarh.
And, it would be naïve not to see past the centuries’ worth of myths to the Brahmin–Baniya‘s political and cultural activities. It’s interesting to note that the etymology of the word dom, which many refer to in local myths about the “untouchable” society of dom, is duma, which also means demon.
In the perspective of devatas admiring Brahmin–Savarnas, “untouchable” caste names such as Chandal, Ghasi, Bhangi, Hadi, Pariah, and others, evoke similar pejorative overtones of revulsion and repulse.
Myth Making And The Dream Of A Hindu Rashtra
The Brahmin world has a meta-narrative of myths that runs parallel to their historical dominance. And, these myths are a mirror of their influence over the Dalit-Bahujan populations throughout history.
To fight their cultural hegemony, narratives must be strategically used. These narratives must depict the ongoing antagonism that the Brahmin world imposes on the Dalit-Bahujans in the name of Hindu religion in everyday life, policymaking, and dehumanisation.
The Brahmin–Savarna traditions have a long history of influencing and subsuming egalitarian, anti-caste traditions, and indigenous religious systems, through myths and fabrications.
This dates back to the times of Pushyamitra Sunga and Sankaracharya, and has been going on during the present day of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) periodicals.
They have even painted Babasaheb Ambedkar in saffron and placed him among Hindu gods, in order to bring him into the fold of the sanatan dharma (eternal faith or Hinduism) and Vedic authority. This is being done so as to accomplish their dream of a Hindu rashtra (nation).
Their myths and fabrications, which are propagated through state authority and cultural institutions, function as social conditioning, resulting in a collective commonsense among the masses, necessitating engagement with an alternative history as well as the Dalit-Bahujan historiography.
Popular Dalit-Bahujan myths should be considered, as they reflect the truth of the times without necessarily needing to be historical events with the accuracy of dates, events, and locations.