{"id":50,"date":"2010-03-01T15:45:53","date_gmt":"2010-03-01T15:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omsweetom\/2010\/03\/holi-in-braj.html"},"modified":"2010-03-01T15:45:53","modified_gmt":"2010-03-01T15:45:53","slug":"holi-in-braj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2010\/03\/holi-in-braj.html","title":{"rendered":"Holi!"},"content":{"rendered":"
HAPPY HOLI! <\/b><\/div>\n

Holi ( <\/i>???? <\/span><\/b>in Sanskrit; pronounced almost like the English word holy<\/i>), sometimes called Hinduism’s “Festival of Colors,” is about as joyous as a religious holiday can be. Although other rituals mark the observance, the highlight is throwing colored powder and colored water at each other. Class distinctions, skin color, age, and gender — all that usually separates us seem to fade away as everyone becomes covered by the same multi-colored mess.<\/p>\n

\"Prahlad.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>There are different stories explaining the origins of the holiday. For many Hindus, the day is a celebration of the triumph of the child devotee Prahlad, whose staunch devotion to Lord Vishnu infuriated his demon father Hiranyakashipu. In spite of several threats from Hiranyakashipu, Prahlad refused to give up his faith. This was more than the tyrant Hiranyakashipu could bear, and so he tried in various ways to have Prahlad killed — poison, mad elephants, poisonous snakes. Each attempt failed, Prahlad’s unflinching faith impelling Vishnu to protect him.  Finally, Hiranyakashipu ordered young Prahlad to sit in the lap of his sister, a demoness named Holika who had acquired a mystic shawl that would protect her from fire. The obedient Prahlad complied, and the boy and his aunt were set ablaze. Miraculously, the shawl flew off of Holika, who then
\nwas burnt to death, and covered Prahlad, who survived unharmed. Holi is said to mark the the burning of Holika.<\/p>\n


\nBut perhaps there is no place where Holi is more vibrant, more
\nexciting, and more reveled in than in Braj (also known as Vrindavan),
\nthe childhood home of Lord Krishna. <\/p>\n

\"krishna_radha_and_companions_play_holi.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>
\nIn Braj, Holi is not a one-day event– it is two-weeks of festivities
\nculminating in two days of joyful “color wars” between the men and
\nwomen of Lord Krishna and his beloved Radha’s followers. One legend —
\npopular among the people of Braj, but not found in traditional Hindu
\ntexts — is that the blackish colored Krishna is said to have
\ncomplained to his mother about the
\ncontrast between his dark skin and Radha’s golden complexion. Krishna’s
\nmother Yashoda Ma playfully pacified her divine son by telling him to
\napply color to Radha’s face. And so Lord Krishna decided that this was
\na good opportunity to play pranks on all the cowherd girls and leave
\nthem covered in so many colors that they’d end up the same hue as he. <\/p>\n

(As an aside, Yashoda’s advice seems to have been
\nspot-on; having played Holi in India, I can attest to the fact that
\nonce all the colors mix together on a person’s face they look
\nunmistakably bluish-black — the exact color that Krishna is described to be!)<\/p>\n

To
\nthis day, Holi in Braj remains an occasion for a good-natured “war of the
\nsexes.” In one popular tradition, the men from Nandagaon (Krishna’s
\nvillage) attempt to follow in Krishna’s footsteps and douse the women
\nof Barsana (Radha’s village). The women, however, chase the men away
\nwith long sticks called lathis<\/i>. The men are forbidden from
\nstriking the women back, so their only recourse is to protect
\nthemselves with shields and try to throw as much color as they can. 
\nThe whole time, of course, everyone is shouting the battle cries of Jai Radhe<\/b><\/i> or Jai Sri Krishna<\/i><\/b>. <\/p>\n

\"holi_braj.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>
\nIf all of this seems a bit silly and maybe even a little childish,
\nwell, it should. Holi is one of those rare holidays where gaiety trumps
\npiety, and where “wearing your faith on your sleeve” takes on a whole
\nnew meaning. It is one day on the Hindu calendar when even the most
\nuptight and stuffy among the religious folk get down from their
\npedestals and join in the fun. It is religion perhaps as it should be
\nmore often… bright, happy, and full of color.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HAPPY HOLI! Holi ( ???? in Sanskrit; pronounced almost like the English word holy), sometimes called Hinduism’s “Festival of Colors,” is about as joyous as a religious holiday can be. Although other rituals mark the observance, the highlight is throwing colored powder and colored water at each other. Class distinctions, skin color, age, and gender…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":207,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1,4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gods-and-goddesses","category-hinduism-101","category-holidays-festivals","category-krishna"],"yoast_head":"\nHoli! - Om Sweet Om<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2010\/03\/holi-in-braj.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Holi! - Om Sweet Om\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"HAPPY HOLI! Holi ( ???? in Sanskrit; pronounced almost like the English word holy), sometimes called Hinduism’s “Festival of Colors,” is about as joyous as a religious holiday can be. Although other rituals mark the observance, the highlight is throwing colored powder and colored water at each other. 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Holi ( ???? in Sanskrit; pronounced almost like the English word holy), sometimes called Hinduism’s “Festival of Colors,” is about as joyous as a religious holiday can be. Although other rituals mark the observance, the highlight is throwing colored powder and colored water at each other. 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He is a Hindu Chaplain and the Coordinator for Hindu Life at Princeton University, and serves as the North American Director of Communications for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), a worldwide organization representing the Vaishnava Hindu tradition. In previous incarnations, Vineet has been a New York City prosecutor, a cable TV show host, and a hospital chaplain. In his free time, he enjoys relaxing with his wife and his new baby, attending classes at The Bhakti Center, and teaching himself photography. As a second-generation, Indian-American, Vaishnava-Hindu, Vineet ponders new ways of further hyphenating his identity.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/author\/vchander"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/207"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}