The Hindu community will this Friday be joined by most of the rest of the country to celebrate the festival of Holi, or Phagwah.
Holi, as we all know, is celebrated very boisterously, with gaiety and abandon as revellers douse each other first with water, then, in the afternoon, with powders of all hues, the scarlet liquid “abeer,” and FINALLY, a sharing of sweets.
But we should know, too, the reason for the celebration; because while each Hindu festival generally emphasises the theme of “good overcoming evil,” they are grounded in narratives that are intended to educate us to act in our present circumstances. So, before we celebrate Holi, we are exhorted to perform in the here and now the actions that can later be celebrated.
In the case of Holi, it all began with that old trope – the ruler who begins well, but is seduced by the trappings of power and then begins to rule tyrannically and oppress the people. So, it was in this particular instance that the ruler Hiranyakashipu had been conferred with great powers that he thought made him beyond the reach of even God, the highest power; and thought he could do anything, no matter how dictatorial. In modern times, he was like those rulers who are elected to office but believe they are above the highest laws as encapsulated in the Constitution.
Against Hiranyakashipu, the resistance came from an unexpected quarter – his own son, Prahalad; who defied the dictatorial father, who then retaliated with his own sharper steel. He asked his sister Holika, who was unaffected by fire, to immolate herself with Prahalad, expecting his own son would be assassinated. But it was Holika who perished in the flames.
Later, Prahalad would educate his young friends not to bow down to his dictatorial father; but to stand up to him and do the right thing and follow the path represented by Lord Vishnu. In the end, due to the steadfastness of young Prahalad, Vishnu himself adopts a special form and materialises to destroy Hiranyakashipu.
It was this event of good overcoming evil that was then celebrated by the people in the kingdom so boisterously, because the yoke of oppression had been removed from their necks.
In Guyana, therefore, it would be a travesty to simply celebrate if evil is roaming the land. For instance, this Holi, there are 5700 sugar workers who were fired by Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) and are on the breadlines.
They are joined there by over 2000 workers who laboured for private cane farmers who lost their GuySuCo markets for their sugar cane with the closure of the factories. These 7700 workers have families, so at least thirty thousand men, women and children have nothing to celebrate and everything to mourn.
The highhandedness of those who made this astounding decision to shutter the sugar estates ignored their own advisors, and one can only conclude that they were motivated by reasons other than the social perspective that guides the running of a state.
This year, Holi is also significantly preceded by Republic Day, which is commemorated with the festival of Mashramani. Republic Day demands that citizens reflect on the sacrifice it took for our forefathers to throw off the yoke of oppression of the foreign, tyrannical rulers in the form of the British. That is an act worthy of celebration, but not if the ideals of sacrifice that guided our forefathers – just as those of Prahalad’s — are sacrificed on the altar of expediency for self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment.
This Holi, we call upon all Guyanese to rise up to the true meaning of the festival, and take a vow to do the right thing: to rid the land of oppression in all its myriad forms. Whether it occurs in our homes; our villages; our regions; and yes, our country, it is our duty to do the right thing. Only then we would have earned the right to celebrate boisterously in the streets.
And shout, “Holi re!!”
