Rebirth

Mar 11, 2009 Editorial

Today Guyana celebrates Phagwah or Holi. As we mentioned yesterday in our editorial, “Religion and Tolerance”, the festival has gravitated out of the Hindu community and has become a truly national one. As with the inclusivity of Christmas, almost everyone today would have been caught up at one location or other in the riotous exuberance of revelry that epitomises Phagwah/Holi.
This crossover and sharing in the cultural repertoire of others in our multicultural and multi-religious society as we strive to live out the meaning of our national motto, One People, One Nation, One Destiny” is most salutary. But as we dry out from our dousings of water and relax after feasting on sweetmeats, our integration may possibly be deepened if we were to reflect on the significance of the festival of Phagwah/Holi.
As with most ancient festivals, Phagwah/Holi has its origins in the cycle of their life played out by our ancestors, in harmony within the grander cycle of nature. Phagwah/Holi represents rebirth.
In the lands of four seasons, our ancestors would have been forced to endure the vicissitudes of a long winter. Locked indoors for months as the trees lost their leaves, the crops their lives and the animals their feed, the coming of spring must indeed have been an exhilarating experience.
Expressed in song, poetry and dance the greening of the trees, the sprouting of the grass and the twittering of the birds reminded those hardy souls that life could indeed begin once again.
This moment came on the night of the full moon during the month of Phalgun, hence the original name – Phagwah. It was the common folk’s expression of their delight in resuming the cycle of life.
As those folks spread across India, the fundamental idea of Phagwah was carried along with it even where there was no literal spring season: just as nature transforms her declivities and depressions inevitably into peaks of joyousness and life, just so can man in his everyday life.
We are, after all, part and parcel of that same nature. Phagwah, then, offers us the assurance that “this too shall pass” or in the folk wisdom, “time longer than twine”.
In the course of that time, many incidents have become attached to the celebration and one conferred the name “Holi” onto the, by then, venerable festival. And in this incident, we can all also benefit by imbibing the old, essential lesson.
A ruler had become so powerful in his kingdom that he demanded that the citizens not only genuflect to him as “King” but to worship him as “God”. Because of the might of the state at his disposal, most of his subjects complied, albeit under duress. Resistance to the King’s arrogance, however, sprouted from an unexpected source – his own beloved young son, Prahalad.
Prahalad not only refused to go along with the pretensions of his father – even though he would have undoubtedly benefited materially if he had acquiesced – but actually began to expose those posturings to his young friends, while maintaining his reverence for God. Prahalad’s posture infuriated his father – et tu, Prahalad? – who ordered him killed.
Opposition to tyrants from within always receives the most condign treatment – from the tyrant’s perspective, of course.
After several attempts at eliminating the boy – who persisted in announcing to all and sundry that the emperor had no clothes – failed, the King resorted to his ultimate weapon. He persuaded his sister, Holika, who was immune to fire, to enter a pyre with his son on the full moon night of Phalgun. Prahalad survived, unlike his aunt who was to lend her name to a festival that was to celebrate not only Prahalad’s fortitude but the subsequent destruction of the tyrant by an incarnation of God. After the long oppression of the people, happiness and joy flowed once again. So Phagwah became conflated with Holi.
For us in Guyana, the lesson may be that if we could overcome the divisions that mar a common approach to the inevitable problems that will threaten to overcome us, spring will certainly come. A Happy Phagwah/Holi to all Guyanese.

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