His name was Hiranyakashipu and he claimed to be equal to Lord Vishnu, the preserver of the universe. Tragically for him, his own son, Prince Prahlad, was a devotee of Lord Vishnu. The king threatened his son with snakes and elephants, but the child remained faithful. After thinking about it, the king summoned his sister Holika. Holika appears in Hindu mythology only as a storytelling device, and is a woman who follows the orders of the male protagonist. The devil was given the boon of being spared from the fire on the condition that he entered alone. So the king covered her with a magical invisible blanket and set it on fire as the young prince sat on his aunt’s lap. The prince prayed to Lord Vishnu. Lord Vishnu burned his evil and refractory aunt to death, but saved the young and virtuous prince who continued to keep his faith.
The story of Holika is a classic example of how Hindu women are cast as enforcers of patriarchy and are punished for it. Holika’s brother burned her on a pyre and we celebrate this every year with a ritual reenactment of her burning. It’s easy to cast Holika as a firebrand villain, but especially in Modi’s India, she’s more like a modern-day feminist hero than a child-burning demon.
Holika enters the story already labeled as ‘devil’. The tyrant’s sister. accomplice. Even though she is a soldier, she is deployed by the King as part of national policy and seems to have no choice. What’s more, her little power and fire-resistant skin come with a clause. Conditional autonomy. In the end, she dies because she was a pawn in the lives of her subordinates.
As the Holika ritual unfolds amid constant news of gang rapes across India this year, the story begins to feel less like a myth and more like a warning about what happens to women in a society where male power and female weakness are normalized.
The truth is, Holi has always felt like a festival where Indian women are targets rather than participants. This is the day when it is socially sanctioned for a man to get drunk, pick up a handful of color, and smear it on a woman he barely knows. “Bula na mano, holy hai” is the ritual cry against this unwelcome touch. This is literally a social disclaimer that means, “Don’t be offended, it’s Holy!” Children shout the same thing as they throw water balloons at strangers from rooftops. Traditionally, this phrase is uttered to draw children into innocent, festive pranks. The spirit of Holi is the spirit of mischief.
But we can no longer avoid that the soft demarcation lines of the 1980s and 1990s, however innocuous as they may have been, have turned into an “anything goes” extravaganza where women are gang-raped while loud party music drowns out their cries for help. In 2018, the BBC reported on sexual attacks related to Holi after girls were attacked with “semen-filled” balloons. The joy of Holi has crystallized into an unbridled assault of sexual assault and harassment as inhibitions are lowered, spirits are high and women are up for grabs. On this day, women, even those who don’t celebrate Holi, prepare to be cat-called, have water balloons strategically aimed at their breasts and genitals, and be groped under the guise of a gentle hug.
Bollywood has played its part by legitimizing sexual harassment in Holi theme songs, such as “Aan Se Aan Lagana” from the 1993 blockbuster Dar, starring Shah Rukh Khan as a stalker. On this day, Indian men observe the women around them with the instincts of predatory animals. When I was six years old, a group of teenage boys grabbed me in my West Delhi neighborhood and smeared me with automotive grease instead of organic color. I can still feel their hands on my body. I have not celebrated Holi since then.
I would go a step further and say that Holi is not the only festival that has lost its meaning. India’s public life of festivals increasingly reflects the broader failures of our society.
Diwali used to celebrate the victory of light, or hope over darkness. Now the sky is choked with smoke, the ground is covered in ash, children are wearing masks, and parents are still baking crackers.
Ram Navami, which celebrates the birth of Lord Ram, was once a quieter religious event. Nowadays, processions that intimidate Dalit and Muslim neighbors are becoming more common.
The pattern is the same for every festival. We turn celebration into spectacle, and we turn spectacle into a mirror of our own failures. This may not be easy to hear, especially on a celebratory day, but none of it is surprising to me. We are a generation that consumes everything and sanctifies nothing. Not air, water, food, or women. This is the organic culmination of a society that has forgotten that joy cannot exist without care, and that festivity is inseparable from morality. It is as if a culture that tolerates corruption and violence breeds more corruption and violence.
The fear is not in the festival itself.
It’s within us.
Like any other festival that India considers worth celebrating, Holi also reveals something to us. We celebrate the burning of women over fire, not just symbolically. We have created a culture where a moment of joy can erase another person’s humanity. Our communities are deeply divided, and the freedoms that women around the world take for granted over their bodies are now dependent on privilege and luck.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. I also remember Holi before it was greased. I remember running barefoot around the neighborhood with the other kids, pooling our money to buy packs of glitter pills, dipping picalis (water pistols) into buckets, pulling out old T-shirts that our parents didn’t care if they got dirty, and soaking in the magic of spring. If we want to bring back light, color, or music, we must first look within ourselves.
We must first grieve what we have lost and acknowledge what can continue. Otherwise, all our festivals would become the “beautiful lies” they are now.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
