Baro maashe tero porbon is a Bengali saying meaning ‘twelve months and thirteen festivals.’ This indicates how many Hindu festivals there are within a year: from short ones lasting for one day to lengthy ones lasting for ten days, the variety is endless. When I worked in West Bengal, the major Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, and Christian religious festivals were celebrated publicly. The approaching festivals were apparent when wandering in the street markets taking in the colorful stalls selling the items necessary for each ritual or celebration. Before Durga Puja, the stalls sell images of the Goddess Durga piercing the demon Mahishasura with her spear. In October – November, before Kali Puja, there are images of Goddess Kali. In December, one of the stall-owners invited me to buy one of his clay crucifixes because, being a white sahib, I would be doing the puja celebrating Jesus’ birth. In June – July towards Rath Yatra, the festival of the pulling of Lord Jagannath’s chariot, there are toy models of the chariot together with small clay icons of Krishna, Balaram and Subhadra; and for Holi in March, the stalls sell bags of colored powder and devices to spray colored water. Of course, the latter carnivalesque festival is upon us.
To keep track of the dates of all these large Indian festivals and the smaller local ones I consulted the Bengali ‘panjika’, called ‘panchang’ in Hindi. It is a Hindu almanac, listing the auspicious moments of each day and night; the notable constellations, the local or large festivals (Hindu as well as Islamic and Christian), the birthdays of famous (primarily Indian) persons (Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda etc.). The one my beloved father-in-law, a learned Bengali Brahmin, would consult, usually ran into 500 or more pages. The book provided even all the mantras and stotras that were used in all kinds of seasonal rituals and pujas. I myself made do with a smaller edition of the same panchang with pink cover (Benimadhab Shil’s Phul Panjika, in case someone is interested). Benimadhab is by no means the only publisher of Hindu panchang. There are many Bengali ones serving the 150 million Bengali-speaking people of India!).
This brings me to what I learned about Hindu calendars and Hindu festivals. There are a large variety of languages and religious cults in India, with an equal variety of calendars, festivals, eras and specific forms of the Divine to be worshipped or loved. The Hindu calendar in Bengal has the same months as Northern
part of -India. These months are based on the lunar year, not the solar year that we are familiar with in the west. The Hindu months start around the middle of the months of the era we call the Christian or Common Era. As the lunar year is shorter than the solar year, every three years an extra so-called dirty month (molo maash) is added. During this extra month no religious festivals take place and the ones that have started, will have a break of around thirty days. Bengal has its own era: the Bongabdo or Bangla Shon. At present we are in the year 1428 of the Bengali Era and Bengali New Year will be celebrated in what is called Pohela Boishakh, the first day of the month Vaishakh, corresponding to 15 April. This means that the Bengali year 1429 will start on 15 April 2022. You would think this is universally the Hindu New Year everywhere in India, but this is also not the case. Moreover, there are more eras that the Hindu calendar uses: the Shaka era, the Vikrama era, the Hijra (Islamic) era, even a Chaitanya era. My experience is that for ‘local’ Hindu festivals you need to consult the local language Hindu panchang. And remember that ‘local’ means areas with at least fifty to hundred million people.
Furthermore, even these large festivals like Holi and Diwali, although seemingly celebrated all over India, are in reality quite local, in the manner in which they are celebrated. And sometimes even under different names. Once more Bengal offers an interesting example. The festival of Holi is regarded as a Spring festival heralding the blossoming of flowers and a renewal of nature after Winter. In Bengal, similarly Diwali is called Kali Puja, in which Goddess Kali is worshiped. Although I noticed that in Bengal fireworks are lit on the eve of Kali Puja / Diwali.
My first experience of Holi was, remarkably enough, not in India but in my hometown, The Hague and in the company of many Hindus of Surinamese background. These people of Indian origin migrated from Suriname to the Netherlands, taking along many Hindu customs and rituals. In the early 1980s I witnessed among others a bonfire, the Holika Dahan or burning of the evils of the past year in open air on a square (with apparent permission of the Municipality). As it was cold, everyone was wearing thick jackets. The next day was the Holi festival itself: but the throwing of colored water was limited to gently throwing or smearing colored talcum powder. This is mostly done at home or in public spaces, like schools. When the weather permits, Holi is celebrated outdoors; the middle of March in Northwest Europe is still winter. The ambiance is not deeply devotional or religious. It is more like fun and celebrating the coming (hopefully in Europe) of the warmth of Spring.
In India the festival was really Spring-like. Everyone dressed in old clothes to ‘play Holi’. Buckets with colored water were brought out and waterspouts were filled with colored water for everyone to spray each other with. Some of the colors were permanent. After the morning playing with colors, the festival continues with a bath and lunch. In West Bengal I did not notice any bonfires the preceding evening. But in India, because of the heat in March, one could comfortably fool around with water, unlike in the Netherlands. For most of the participants in this festival, I suppose the event was indeed heralding the coming of Spring and the renewal of nature. After all, even in tropical India, Spring is an important season in nature and for farming.
Holi is not only celebrated differently in different parts of India (or in the Netherlands among the Hindus of Surinamese heritage), the stories explaining the celebrations are also quite different. My Surinamese friends insisted, as do many other Hindus, that Holi is about the victory of good over evil. This is a standard explanation for many Hindu festivals, from Diwali to Durga Puja. In the case of Holi, the Surinamese Hindus tell the story about the witch Holika who harassed the devout Prahlad, the good son of the evil king Hiranyakashipu. In Bengali there is an expression: ’a Prahlad in the family of demons’, which means a very good or innocent person being tormented by evil family members. The story of Prahlad and Hiranyakashipu is found in several versions in among others the Vishnu Purana and the Bhagavata Purana. In those stories the pious son Prahlad is tormented by his father Hiranyakashipu who claims to be the Supreme Lord and demands to be worshipped as such. Prahlad, being devoted to Vishnu, refuses. The evil father wants to kill the son. In the end Narasimha, the Man-Lion incarnation of Vishnu, emerges out of a shattered pillar and tears the demonic Hiranyakashipu to pieces to protect the pious Prahlad. The story about Holika (which is not found in the Vishnu Purana or the Bhagavata Purana) narrates that this witch promised Hiranyakashipu to kill Prahlad by ascending a pyre together. She would remain unscathed because she would protect herself with magic powder, and Prahlad would be burned. Prahlad agrees to this but he remains unharmed and Holika is burned. In Vrindavan, the place where Krishna’s youthful pastimes took place it is said that Holi was initiated by Krishna when he was teasing Radha and the other the gopis (cowherd girls). In spite of the various forms and stories of Holi, the common essence is gaiety and celebrating life’s eternal renewal. Hopefully Holi will work its magic on us this year!
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