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