IB World Religions 4.2.3. Festivals: Holi, Navaratri, Dassehra and Divali Notes

4.2.3. Festivals: Holi, Navaratri, Dassehra and Divali

Festivals and their myths

1. Hindu festivals rest on stories. Each major utsava (festival) retells an episode from the Puranas or from the epics, and the ritual acts the story out rather than simply remembering it.
2. The same festival is often explained by different stories in different places. A festival kept in Bengal and in Tamil Nadu on the same day may be traced to two separate episodes, and Hindus do not usually treat this as a problem to be resolved.
3. The calendar is lunisolar. Months such as Phalguna, Ashvina and Kartika run from one new moon to the next, each divided into a waxing and a waning paksha (fortnight), with the day fixed by the tithi (lunar day).
4. A few festivals follow the sun instead of the moon. Makar Sankranti, kept as Pongal in Tamil Nadu, marks the sun's northward turn in mid January and falls on almost the same date every year.
5. Most festivals share a common shape. Houses are cleaned, new clothes are worn, a puja is performed, particular foods are cooked, sweets are given to neighbours and the extended family gathers.
6. They are public occasions as well as domestic ones. Processions, temporary murtis, decorated streets and state holidays belong to the larger festivals, and which days are declared holidays differs from one Indian state to another.

Holi and the spring bonfire

1. Holi falls on the full moon of Phalguna, in February or March, and marks the end of winter and the arrival of spring. It is the most physically unrestrained of the major festivals.
2. Its story is the rescue of Prahlada. Hindus tell how the boy's devotion to Vishnu enraged his father, and how his aunt Holika, who could not be burned, carried him into a fire that consumed her and left him untouched.
3. The festival opens on the eve with Holika Dahan, a public bonfire. People walk around it, throw in grain and coconut, and roast the first of the new harvest in the embers.
4. The next morning is the throwing of colour. Gulal, coloured powder, and coloured water are thrown at anyone within reach, and for that day the usual distances of age, gender, wealth and status are deliberately relaxed.
5. In Braj, the region around Mathura and Vrindavan, Holi is tied to Krishna and the gopis (cowherd women). At Barsana the Lathmar Holi has women drive the men of a neighbouring village away with long sticks.
6. Contemporary observance is uneven. Some families avoid the public play because it can turn rough, and Holi has spread well beyond Hindu communities as a spring street party.

Navaratri and the goddess

1. Navaratri means nine nights, and the best known of the year's several Navaratris falls in Ashvina, in September or October. It is dedicated to the goddess, worshipped as Devi or Durga.
2. The story comes from the Devi Mahatmya. The gods, unable to defeat the buffalo demon Mahishasura, pool their powers to produce Durga, who fights him through nine nights and kills him on the tenth day.
3. The nine nights look completely different from region to region. In Gujarat they are spent dancing garba and dandiya raas in circles around a lamp, sometimes until well after midnight.
4. In Bengal the same days are Durga Puja, with large clay murtis of Durga installed in temporary pandals that whole neighbourhoods commission, decorate and compete over.
5. In Tamil Nadu and Karnataka the season is marked by golu, tiered displays of dolls and figures set up at home, with women and children visiting each other's displays and exchanging gifts.
6. Many Hindus fast through the nine days, eating fruit and avoiding grain, and honour nine forms of the goddess on successive days. Chaitra Navaratri in spring keeps the same pattern and ends at Rama Navami.

Dassehra and Vijayadashami

1. Dassehra falls on the tenth day, immediately after Navaratri, and is also called Vijayadashami, the tenth day of victory. The two festivals run as one long season rather than as separate events.
2. Two different victories are celebrated on it. In much of the north it is the day Rama killed Ravana, and in the east it is the day Durga killed Mahishasura, and Hindus read both as dharma overcoming its opposite.
3. In north India the preceding nights are filled by Ramlila, open-air performances of the Ramayana staged over several evenings by local troupes. The cycle ends with towering effigies of Ravana and his brothers packed with fireworks and set alight.
4. In Bengal the day is the departure of the goddess. Durga's image is carried in procession to a river or tank for visarjan (immersion), and married women mark each other with vermilion before it leaves.
5. Mysore keeps a royal version. Its Dasara procession carries a golden howdah on a decorated elephant through the city, a court festival the state government now organises.
6. The day is also used for beginnings. Ayudha Puja honours tools, instruments and vehicles, children are started on their letters at Vidyarambha, and the day is widely held to be auspicious for anything newly begun.

Divali and the lamps

1. Divali, also written Deepavali, means a row of lights. It falls on the new moon of Kartika, in October or November, and is the most widely kept of all Hindu festivals.
2. Several stories are told for it. In the north it is the return of Rama to Ayodhya after fourteen years of exile, welcomed home with lamps, while in the south it is Krishna's defeat of Narakasura, and in the west it centres on Lakshmi.
3. Lakshmi puja is its ritual core in much of India. Houses are cleaned and lit so that the goddess of prosperity will enter them, and many merchant families in Gujarat and Rajasthan open new account books and begin their business year.
4. The visible practices are lamps and thresholds. Rows of diyas (clay lamps) are set along walls and roofs, rangoli patterns are drawn at the door, fireworks are let off, and sweets are exchanged with neighbours.
5. The festival runs across five days in many regions. Dhanteras, Naraka Chaturdashi, Lakshmi Puja, Annakut and Bhai Dooj each have their own observance, the last honouring the bond between brothers and sisters.
6. Other traditions keep the same days. Jains mark the passing of Mahavira into nirvana and Sikhs mark the release of Guru Hargobind as Bandi Chhor Divas, and Divali is a public holiday in several countries with large Indian populations.

Regional and family variation

1. Variation is the rule rather than the exception. The festival year itself differs, with regions beginning the new year at different points and giving different weight to the same day.
2. Whole festivals are regional. Onam belongs to Kerala, Pongal to Tamil Nadu, Bihu to Assam, and Ganesh Chaturthi is kept everywhere but dominates public life in Maharashtra.
3. Jati and family custom decide the detail. Which festivals a household keeps, which dishes are cooked, which relatives are visited and which fasts are held are all matters of inherited family practice.
4. Households also keep observances of their own. A kula-devata has its own day, a vrata (vow) may be undertaken by one member, and a bride commonly brings customs from her natal family into her new one.
5. Diaspora practice adapts the calendar. Festivals move to the nearest weekend, temple halls replace streets, and Divali is marked in schools and civic buildings in Britain, Trinidad, Fiji and South Africa.
6. What holds across all of it is the pattern rather than the content. A story is retold, the house and the worshipper are purified, an offering is made, and food is shared out afterwards.