The 7 Most Colorful Hindu Festivals

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Hinduism is known for being a colorful religion. The images and icons of the Hindu gods and goddesses are often painted dramatic yellows, bright blues and vibrant reds, and many Hindu temples are filled with intricate carvings and beautiful statues. Home shrines often involve vividly colored paintings of deities or carefully formed statues. Fresh flowers are a common offering to the various gods and goddesses, and many forms of worship involve lanterns, candles or old-fashioned earthenware oil lamps. Traditional Indian dress is also very colorful. Women wear beautiful jewelry and brightly colored skirts with delicate embroidery, and many men wear jackets that are just as vibrantly colored and carefully decorated. These traditional clothes are often worn on festival days and add to the riot of color that fills Indian temples and streets on holidays.

These beautiful Hindu festivals vary across India. Some states celebrate festivals on a different day than their neighbors while others celebrate different festivals entirely. As festivals often run for multiple days, outsiders may feel like India is constantly celebrating something. This is not completely inaccurate given the joyful nature of some home-worship practices. Still, it is during statewide and nationwide festivals that the colors of Hinduism are displayed in their full glory. Here are the 7 most colorful Hindu festivals.

Holi

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Holi, also known as the “Festival of Colors,” takes place every spring during the Hindu month of Phalguna. This corresponds with a date between the end of February and the middle of March on the Gregorian calendar. The festival officially runs from evening to evening.

Celebrations begin the first evening with religious rituals, but Holi is best known for the events of the following morning, Rangwali Holi. During this festive free-for-all, people throw colored powder and waters on each other. In public festivals, anyone and everyone is fair game, and people are covered head to foot in various colors. Those celebrating also carry drums and musical instruments and go from place to place singing and dancing.

The festival is rooted in multiple myths. One legend says that Prahlada, the son of an arrogant demon, remained devoted to the god Vishnu even when Prahlada’s father demanded that Prahlada worship him instead of Vishnu. Prahlada’s father was furious, and Prahlada was tricked into sitting on a pyre but was not burned. At dusk, Vishnu appeared and vindicated Prahlada by slaying Prahlada’s evil father.

Another popular myth says that the god Krishna was concerned that his love Radha would not love him in return due to his blue skin. Krishna’s mother advises Krishna to smear Radha’s face with color. It is after this playful coloring that Radha and Krishna became a divine couple.

Gangaur

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Gangaur takes place directly after Holi and runs for a full 16 days. Gangaur focuses on the god Shiva’s wife Gauri, also known as the goddess Parvati. During this festival, unmarried women pray for a good husband and married women pray for the welfare, health and longevity of their husbands and for a happy marriage.

During Ganguar, women decorate their hands and feet with drawings in Mehndi paste, and unmarried girls travel around their homes carrying a pot with a burning lamp inside on their heads. As they walk, they sing and collect small presents of sweets, oil, cash and ghee. Hindus also make images of Parvati out of clay or repaint preexisting wooden figures. During the final days of the festival, these images are carefully decorated to look alive and are carried outside into gardens amid a colorful procession.

Vasant Panchami

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Vasant Panchami usually falls sometime in January or February and centers around the goddess Saraswati. Saraswati is the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, wisdom, learning and the arts. Saraswati, Lakshimi and Parvati form the Tridevi, or trinity of goddesses. The goddesses of this trinity are worshipped in their own right but also as the wives and helpers of the male trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

The earliest known mention of Saraswati is in the Rigveda, the oldest of the ancient Hindu holy texts, the Vedas. Saraswati has remained an important goddess from the Vedic period until today, and the Vasant Panchami festival is also called the Saraswati Puja.

During the Vasant Panchami, worshippers dress in yellow clothes and exchange yellow foods. Sweetmeats and rice dishes are often cooked with saffron to give the foods a yellow hue. Hindu children often start school on Saraswati Puja and are taught to write their first word on this auspicious day.

Navaratri

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This ten day festival takes place in the autumn and celebrates the triumph of good over evil. There are several deities associated with Navaratri, but the most commonly honored deities are the god Rama and the goddess Durga. Hindus who focus on Rama reference the great Indian epic the “Ramayana” wherein the god Rama battled and defeated the demon king Ravana. Those who emphasize Durga retell the story of the “Devi Mahatmya.” In this myth, all the gods are unable to defeat the buffalo demon Mahishasura, but when they give Durga their weapons, she slays Mahishasura.

The festival is sometimes called the “Festival of Dance” and is celebrated with great joy. Statues representing evil forces are burnt with fireworks, men and women take part in folk dances and smear each other with color. Actors and actresses reenact the defeat of evil at the hands of Durga or Rama, and families begin to prepare for Diwali which takes place twenty days after Navaratri.

Diwali

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Diwali is one of the best known Hindu holidays. Also called the “Festival of Lights,” this famous festival takes place between late October and late November on the Gregorian calendar and celebrates the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance and hope over despair. On Diwali night, Hindus dress up in their best clothing and light numerous lamps and candles both inside and outside their homes. Puja, or prayers, are offered to the deities and most people focus their prayers on Lakshmi, the goddess of fertility and prosperity. After puja, family members have a feast together and eat sweets. Close friends and family members also exchange gifts, and many people create intricate rangoli decorations using colored powder or sand.

Hindus are not the only people that celebrate Diwali. Jains, Sikhs and Newar Buddhists also celebrate parts of the festival, though, unlike practitioners of Hinduism, these other groups do not always see Lakshmi as the focus of Diwali. Jains celebrate the enlightenment of Mahavira, one of the saviors and spiritual teachers of Jainism, while Sikhs tend to emphasize the release of Guru Hargobind from a Mughal Empire prison.

Hanuman Jayanti

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Hanuman Jayanti, also called Hanuman Janam-Utsav, is celebrated on different days in different Indian states. The two main dates chosen are in the Hindu month of Chaitra, corresponding to the Gregorian calendar months of March or April, or the Hindu month of Dhanu, corresponding to the Gregorian months of December or January. Regardless of which month it is celebrated in, this auspicious day commemorates the birth of Hanuman, the monkey god associated with strength, energy, protection and victory against evil.

Hanuman is known for how he helped the god Rama save Sita, Rama’s wife, after Sita was kidnapped by the demon Ravana. To honor this brave and loyal warrior, Hindus visit one of Hanuman’s temples in the morning and apply red tilak to the image’s forehead. Then, devotees recite prayers and read the Hanuman Chalisa, a devotional song dedicated to Lord Hanuman that is believed to have the power to cast out evil spirits. Afterwards, Hindus take some of the tilak from the image of Hanuman and apply it to their own foreheads.

Onam

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Onam is an annual festival that falls in the month of Chingam which corresponds with the Gregorian calendar month of August or September. The festival commemorates a number of mythological moments including the myth of Kashyapa. In this story, a demon named Mahabali defeated the gods and took over the three worlds. Vishnu, however, refused to help the other gods overthrow Mahabali because Mahabali was a good ruler. Instead, Vishnu took the form of a dwarf boy and convinced Mahabali to give him all the land the dwarf boy could cover in three strides. After Mahabali agreed, Vishnu grew to an enormous size and took two long strides which carried him across all three worlds. Mahabali continued to act as a good ruler and kept his promise to Vishnu. Vishnu thus granted Mahabali the ability to return to the lands he once ruled for the harvest festival which came to be called Onam.

There are many festivities associated with Onam including, boat races, flower arranging, women’s dances, tiger dances, martial arts, songs and costumes. The celebration begins with a parade featuring elephants, drums, floats and colorfully dressed people in masks, and the colorful traditions continue for 10 whole days.