Se­nior jour­nal­ist SP Singh has posted a piece in some What­sApp groups about Holi and our con­tem­po­rary times where the Hindu, Sikh, Musalman ques­tions have come to de­fine our pol­i­tics, lives, fes­ti­vals, and even culi­nary and sar­to­r­ial choices. At a time when the coun­try is busy dis­cussing hi­jab, tur­ban-wear­ing Sikh stu­dents are be­ing asked to re­move their re­li­gious sym­bols, and com­mu­ni­ties are wary of their re­li­gion’s daugh­ters mar­ry­ing boys of a dif­fer­ent faith, SP Singh has drawn some link­ages that will sur­prise you. We, at the WSN, are tak­ing the lib­erty to pub­lish this post by SP Singh, pre­sum­ing that it is in the pub­lic do­main and needs to reach larger au­di­ences than merely the au­thor’s phone book con­tacts. – WSN Ed­i­tor

HOLI HAD AL­WAYS BEEN A PROB­LEM­ATIC FES­TI­VAL FOR ME. Friends drenched in hap­pi­ness would land up at home, and my re­ac­tion would leave them ut­terly dis­ap­pointed. Get­ting drenched, look­ing ghostly and scrub­bing off colours in the af­ter­noon with “Filmi Sitaron Ka Saun­driya Sabun” was some­how not my favourite waste of time when I could sim­ply watch them from the ter­race of our house and amuse my­self with the scenes in the street be­low. The next day I would hear sto­ries of how much my co­hort en­joyed them­selves, and also about the fights that broke out among rev­ellers and a few head­lines about com­mu­nal skir­mishes in parts of the coun­try.

Over the years, I of­ten used to hear phrases like Holi be­ing a “रंगों का त्योहार” or “हिन्दुओं का त्योहार’. Dur­ing my child­hood years, I also came in touch with some “Gur­mat Mis­sion­ar­ies” who would teach us kids how Sikhs have noth­ing to do with ‘holi’ and that it is a Hindu fes­ti­val. They later fought among them­selves, pre­sum­ably with­out hav­ing played holi, and those who emerged pow­er­ful re­named them­selves “Sikh mis­sion­ar­ies” but their view about Holi re­mained the same.

How dif­fi­cult must it have been for them to know that for kids my age, smear­ing each other in a mil­lion colours was hardly a Hindu, Mus­lim or Sikh ac­tiv­ity!

Later, as I grew up, I dis­cov­ered that mis­sion­ar­ies were every­where, and thanks to their un­tir­ing work, Holi be­came a sen­si­tive fes­ti­val, one that could trig­ger ri­ots.

In a coun­try where hat­ing the Mus­lims has be­come a regime-sanc­tioned de­fault po­si­tion for a large num­ber of peo­ple, in pub­lic places, schools, col­leges, draw­ing rooms and What­sApp groups, it of­ten es­capes how the os­ten­si­bly “Hindu fes­ti­val of colours” has re­mained a part of Mus­lim cul­ture and lit­er­a­ture for cen­turies.

In fact, my favourite Holi song comes from Nazeer Ak­barabadi –

जब फागुन रंग झमकते हों तब देख बहारें होली की
और दफ़ के शोर खड़कते हों तब देख बहारें होली की
कुछ भीगी तानें होली की कुछ नाज़-ओ-अदा के ढंग-भरे
दिल भूले देख बहारों को और कानों में आहंग भरे
कुछ तबले खड़कें रंग-भरे कुछ ऐश के दम मुँह-चंग भरे
कुछ घुंघरू ताल छनकते हों तब देख बहारें होली की
कुछ नाज़ जतावें लड़ लड़ के कुछ होली गावें अड़ अड़ के
कुछ लचके शोख़ कमर पतली कुछ हाथ चले कुछ तन भड़के
कुछ काफ़िर नैन मटकते हों तब देख बहारें होली की

It would sound blas­phe­mous to point out in these times of deep di­vi­sions and sus­pi­cions that Holi and Parsi com­mu­ni­ty’s Navroz al­most be­came twin fes­ti­vals over time. The sad­dest part is that to­day, many of those cel­e­brat­ing Holi hardly know about even Navroz or its ethos, for­get about Mughals’ as­so­ci­a­tion with Holi.

Ak­bar played Holi even with hoi pol­loi – well doc­u­mented in Abul Faza­l’s Ain-e-Ak­bari – a tra­di­tion he seem­ingly passed down since Tuzk-e-Ja­hangiri also has a ref­er­ence to Ja­hangir play­ing Holi and at­tend­ing mu­si­cal gath­er­ings around that event. Artists like Go­vard­han and Rasik have painted Ja­hangir play­ing Holi with Noor­ja­han. Shah­ja­han called it Eid-e-Gu­labi and Ba­hadur Shah Za­far ac­tu­ally presided over a whole new genre of Urdu po­etry called Hori.

Pop­u­lar lore has many a scan­dalous tales of Mo­hammed Shah Rangila run­ning around his palace, his wife chas­ing him with a ‘pichkari’.

It was­n’t just the Mughals. Niza­m­mud­din Au­lia ad­vo­cated spread­ing love and colours in the same mea­sure. His fer­vent devo­tee, Abul Hasan Yameenud­din of vil­lage Patiyali in to­day’s riot-prone Kas­ganj, also com­posed this verse in his inim­itable Hindvi for the oc­ca­sion:

आज रंग है ऐ माँ रंग है री,
मेरे महबूब के घर रंग है री।
अरे अल्लाह तू है हर,
मेरे महबूब के घर रंग है री।

Of course, you know Abul Hasan Yameenud­din, aka Amir Khus­rau. We have all lis­tened to the mes­meris­ing Coke Stu­dio ren­di­tion of Khus­rau’s kalaam by Ra­hat Fateh Ali Khan and Am­jad Sabri but, pray, how for­tu­nate were those who would have heard Ghu­lam Farid Sabri and Nus­rat Fateh Ali Khan cre­ate that magic half a cen­tury ago! It’s not that I don’t like Hadiqa Kian­i’s cover, but…

Mo­hey peer payo Ni­ja­mud­din au­lia/​Des bides mien phiri ri, tera rang bhayo ni­ja­mud­din au­lia!

In the early 90s, when I would deal with news flow from the Luc­know bu­reau at the cen­tral na­tional desk of a ma­jor news agency I worked in, there used to be of­ten ref­er­ences to the po­etry of Sufi Shah Niaz be­ing sung in pub­lic cel­e­bra­tions of Holi. Every year, some new re­cruit would come to us with the same prob­lem: “Sir, through­out the story, they are spelling it as ‘hori’ in­stead of ‘holi’. Change karna hai ke nahi?” The same de­bate would hap­pen every year in the news­room.

Sufi Shah Niaz was a con­tem­po­rary of Nazeer Ak­barabadi, and while I am not sure how things are there with a Yogi in po­si­tion of power, but when bh­ogis were rul­ing, Luc­know used to re­ver­ber­ate with Holi songs! Sorry, ‘Hori’ songs.

Sam­ple this very pop­u­lar one from the ‘Hori’ genre:

होरी होए रही है अहमद जियो के द्वार
हज़रत अली का रंग बना है हसन हुसैन खिलार
(Holi is be­ing played at the gate of Prophet Mo­ham­mad,
Ali has brought colours, Hu­sain and Hasan are play­ing).

Keep read­ing:
ऐसो होरी की धूम मची है चहुँ ओर पड़ी है पुकार
ऐसो अनोखो चतुर खिलाडी रंग दीन्हो संसार
नियाज़ पियारा भर भर छिड़के एक ही रंग सहस पिचकार

You re­ally want to me trans­late that? You never trans­late colours. They just take you over.

Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mod­i’s con­stituency, Varanasi, has a Sam­pur­nanand San­skrit Vish­wavidyalaya. It is a 231-year old in­sti­tu­tion that we all knew ear­lier as the Gov­ern­ment San­skrit Col­lege, Benares, but when it was set up, it was only called San­skrit Col­lege. While slam­ming Macaulay is now fash­ion­able, few re­mem­ber those who stood up against his ed­u­ca­tion pol­icy, among them the likes of Eng­lish Ori­en­tal­ist Ho­race Hay­man Wil­son who fought for San­skrit and en­sured this col­lege was set up. In a bal­anc­ing act, the Delhi Col­lege was also set up, which you to­day know as the Za­kir Hus­sain Col­lege. It was this col­lege that gave us a man called Maulvi Za­kaullah, also re­ferred to as Mun­shi Za­kaullah or Za­kaullah Dehlvi or Maulvi Mo­ham­mad Za­kaullah, whose re­mark­able work “Tarikh-e-Hin­dus­tani”, posed a ques­tion that will stump the Gu­jarati-turned-Ba­narasi Babu’s regime to­day: “Who says Holi is a Hindu fes­ti­val?”

To­day, just for ask­ing that ques­tion, he would have been hounded and lynched in Bu­land­shahr or Morad­abad or Ali­garh or Al­la­habad, all towns where he worked and pro­duced pre­cious trans­la­tions of west­ern sci­ences, his­tory, phi­los­o­phy, sci­en­tific texts into Urdu.

Not many of my friends now hear much about Qayam, an 18th-cen­tury poet, who was the mas­ter of de­pict­ing the real naugh­ti­ness of Holi. (Ghalib ac­knowl­edges him as his Us­tad, by the way.) Some­day, do google and find Qayam’s Chand­pur Ki Holi that talks about the maulvi who can’t find his way to the lo­cal mosque be­cause he is drunk in holi’s colours and as­so­ci­ated flu­ids!

 

I was a Class IX stu­dent in Lud­hi­ana when Ra­jesh Khanna-star­rer “Dhan­wan” came to town. It was a dis­cov­ery for me that a bunch of stu­dents could plan to skip school and go watch a movie in a the­atre. (That’s how cin­ema halls were re­ferred to in those days.) The movie songs were all over on the ra­dio, and tone-deaf that I was, I would still hum “Yeh Aankhein Dekh Kar Hum Saari Duniya Bhool Jaate Hain.” (Of course, when no one was watch­ing or lis­ten­ing. I still sing this one, for a 10-month-old I am deeply in love with. You should see her eyes!)

But what re­ally fas­ci­nated me was a dif­fer­ent song from that movie, ‘Dhan­wan’: “Maro Bhar Bharke Pichkari,” not be­cause of what the song said, but be­cause the All In­dia Ra­dio’s Urdu Ser­vice would tell me that ‘gaane ke bol likhe hain Sahir Lud­hi­anvi ne’. It was the first time I had heard of his name, and also that there was this man who had made my town fa­mous.

To­day, when I re­visit that song, I won­der if Sahir meant what his words might con­vey to Yogi Adityanath’s sena:

मारो भर-भर के पिचकारी
होली का मतलब है
रंग दो एक रंग दुनिया सारी
होली का यही मतलब हे
मारो भर भर कर के पिचकारी

We can­not colour this world in one colour. Not saf­fron, not green, not red. Not even bas­anti. Holi stands for a mil­lion colours. This urge to colour the sky Bas­anti or think that In­quilab is valid only if it comes in a deep shade of Red is against the very spirit of Holi. When Sur­jit Patar, the poet who chron­i­cled our lives and times like no other, played with colours, he pro­duced ਰੰਗਾਂ ਦੀ ਕਵੀਸ਼ਰੀ:

ਲਿਖਾਂ ਮੈਂ ਕਬਿੱਤ ਰੰਗਾਂ ਸਾਰਿਆਂ ਨਮਿੱਤ ਤੁਸੀਂ ਸੁਣੋ ਲਾ ਕੇ ਚਿੱਤ ਮੇਰੀ ਕਾਵਿ ਰੰਗ ਸੰਗਲ਼ੀ
ਰੰਗ ਰੰਗ ਰੰਗ ਮੇਰੇ ਚਾਰੇ ਪਾਸੇ ਰੰਗ ਮੇਰੀ ਏਹੋ ਹੈ ਉਮੰਗ ਵਸੇ ਦੁਨੀਆ ਇਹ ਰੰਗਲੀ

We can­not colour this world in one colour. Not saf­fron, not green, not red. Not even bas­anti.

You can try and imag­ine all the colours you knew, and still you’ll need Patar to com­plete your palette:

ਊਦਾ ਤੇ ਉਨਾਭੀ, ਅਸਮਾਨੀ ਤੇ ਅੰਗੂਰੀ ਅੰਬਰਸੀਆ, ਅਨਾਰੀ, ਆਬਨੂਸੀ ਅਤੇ ਸੰਦਲੀ ਸੌਂਫ਼ੀਆ, ਸੰਧੂਰੀ, ਸੂਹਾ, ਸਾਂਵਲਾ, ਸਫ਼ੈਦ, ਸਾਵਾ ਸੰਤਰੀ, ਸਲੇਟੀ, ਸੁਰਖ਼, ਸਰਦਈ ਤੇ ਸ਼ਰਬਤੀ
ਰੰਗ ਰੰਗ ਰੰਗ ਮੇਰੇ ਚਾਰੇ ਪਾਸੇ ਰੰਗ…

ਖਾਖੀ, ਖੱਟਾ, ਗਾਜਰੀ, ਗੁਲਾਬੀ, ਗੋਰਾ, ਗੁਲਾਨਾਰੀ ਗੇਰੂਆ, ਘੀਆ ਕਪੂਰੀ, ਘੁੱਗੀ ਰੰਗਾ, ਗਾਚਣੀ ਜ਼ਹਿਰ-ਮਹੁਰਾ, ਜੋਗੀਆ, ਜੰਗਾਰੀ, ਜ਼ਰਦ, ਜਾਮਨੀ ਟਮਾਟਰੀ ਤੇ ਤੋਤੇ ਰੰਗਾ, ਤਵਾਸ਼ੀਰੀ, ਤਾਂਬਈ
ਰੰਗ ਰੰਗ ਰੰਗ ਮੇਰੇ ਚਾਰੇ ਪਾਸੇ ਰੰਗ…

Let us go back to Baba Bulleh Shah, and pre­pare our­selves for Holi:

होरी खेलुँगी कह कर बिस्मिल्लाह
नाम नबी की रतन चढ़ी बूँद पड़ी अल्लाह अल्लाह
रंग-रंगीली ओही खिलावे जो सखी होवे फ़ना-फ़िल्लाह
होरी खेलुँगी कह कर बिस्मिल्लाह

सिब्ग़तुल्लाह की भर पिचकारी अल्लाहुस-समद पिया मुँह पर मारी
नूर नबी दा हक़ से जारी नूर मोहम्मद सल्लल्लाह
‘बुल्लिहा’ शौह दी धूम मची है ला-इलाहा इल-लल्लाह
होरी खेलुँगी कह कर बिस्मिल्लाह

Lis­ten to it in the mes­meris­ing voice of com­poser, singer, lyri­cist, film the­o­rist, poly­glot Madan Gopal Singh, or the high-pitched notes of the in­com­pa­ra­ble Daler Mehndi or my per­sonal favourite sufi vo­cal­ist Rad­hika Sood, and you’ll know what it means to be a drenched in the syn­cretic tra­di­tion of a mil­lion colours never al­low­ing our­selves to be de­fined in mono­chro­matic terms.

Who says a par­tic­u­lar re­li­gion owns the Holi fes­ti­val? Well, a lot many peo­ple. In Pak­istan, Holi is a fes­ti­val of the Hindu mi­nor­ity. Im­ran Khan, who had once clos­eted him­self in­side a ho­tel in 1987 while on a crick­et­ing tour of In­dia lest he is drenched in colours crim­son, now only greets “our Hindu com­mu­nity” on Holi. In a coun­try where re­li­gion has run gov­ern­ments – from Ja­maat-e-Is­lami to Jamiat Ulema-e-Is­lam – and where killjoys like Maulana ‎Fazal-ur-Rehman are lead­ing a tehreek to bring about a rev­o­lu­tion, it is­n’t easy for de­vout Mus­lims to cel­e­brate a fes­ti­val about which the great Kali­das Gupta ‘Raza’ had once said: “रंग नहीं देखते हिन्दू या मुस्लमान / बरस जाते हैं सब पे एक सामान।” When I quoted this to a close friend who is very ac­tive on so­cial me­dia to ed­u­cate peo­ple how noth­ing had been done in In­dia for 70 years and a lot of work is wait­ing for our great lead­er­ship, he turned to me and asked: “यह कालीदास गुप्ता रज़ा हिन्दू थे या मुसलमान?” I said he com­piled the Di­wan-e-Ghalib in the most com­pre­hen­sive and chrono­log­i­cally cor­rect or­der to date. “हिन्दू थे या मुसलमान?” he asked again.

I wanted to hit back with Qa­teel Shi­fai’s lines — होली न तेरी है, ना मेरी / ईद जैसे है सब की, हमारी तुम्हारी / रस्मों और त्योहारों को ना बाँट, मेरे यार / सिर्फ अदा-ए-त्योहार को देख, जो है सब से प्यारी — but I re­strained my­self. Per­haps I was­n’t brave enough for the poet who said ‘मुझे आई ना जग से लाज’. If my friend could ask “हिन्दू थे या मुसलमान?,” he was­n’t go­ing to like me quot­ing a poet whose real name was Au­rangzeb!

It was this Hindki poet Au­rangzeb who had de­fined my youth with
किया है प्यार जिसे हम ने ज़िंदगी की तरह or
अपने हाथों की लकीरों में बसा ले मुझ को or
वो दिल ही क्या तेरे मिलने की जो दुआ न करे or
दर्द से मेरा दामन भर दे या अल्लाह or…

You can rise above these di­vi­sive lines. The Guru said, very ap­pro­pri­ately in Raga Bas­ant, “ਆਜੁ ਹਮਾਰੈ ਬਨੇ ਫਾਗ ॥ ਪ੍ਰਭ ਸੰਗੀ ਮਿਲਿ ਖੇਲਨ ਲਾਗ ॥ ਹੋਲੀ ਕੀਨੀ ਸੰਤ ਸੇਵ ॥ ਰੰਗੁ ਲਾਗਾ ਅਤਿ ਲਾਲ ਦੇਵ ॥੨॥” Is there a bet­ter shade of crim­son in this world?

I’ve got a fist­ful of colours, and in my tone-deaf way, I will sing Holi Ke Din Dil Mil Jatey Hain and won­der why a paint­ing like Guer­nica, per­haps more fa­mous than Mon­al­isa, does not have colours? It’ll make some of you think if we should be play­ing Holi at all when Ukrain­ian kids are try­ing to pull them­selves out of the rub­ble and rou­ble power, and that will spoil Holi for you. Well, that’s the spirit of Holi — to drench you in the un­ex­pected! What do you think I was do­ing for the last 2,000 words? Happy Holi! Bis­mil­lah!

Now, I’ve got to go and sing to that 10-month-old. She should know that Holi is a fes­ti­val for the kid in­side us who must play with a mil­lion colours and sing even when tone-deaf. How else will Guer­nica find its/​her colours?

© sp singh