GUYANA is one of the few countries in the world where festivals ranging from the very ancient to the contemporary are celebrated.  Phagwah is one such festival dating from the Bronze Age and is associated with the Hindu religion.  This year it is celebrated on Tuesday, 7th March.

Like all very ancient festivals, various traditions become attached to them over the centuries and, in this offering, we will touch on three which have become attached to Phagwah.  The first is that it is a Spring Festival.  In the Northern Hemisphere, the cold of winter would have receded by March/April and life begins anew.  The trees, other vegetation, birds, and animals hibernated during winter-spring to life.  Farmers are now able to plough, sow and harvest.  Many ancient civilizations date their New Year from this time of renewal. Ancient India, and Persia, with its Now Roz did so. In ancient Rome also, their New Year began in March.  This is a season of entertaining, festivity and relaxation and Phagwah has continued in that tradition.

Phagwah is known by two names – Phagwah and Holi:  The word Phagwah is associated with the month of Phalgun, the month of fruitfulness and spring.  The word Holi, on the other hand, is associated with religious teaching and emphasises that Good will always triumph over Evil and Truth over Untruth.

Hiranya Kasipu was a king in ancient India.  By very stringent penance, he achieved supernatural powers until God Himself, Lord Vishnu, recognised him and offered him three boons of his choice.  The boons granted him were that he could not die or be killed at either day or night,  that neither Man nor animal could kill him,  and that he could never die or be killed on Earth.  Hiranya Kasipu now felt that he was immortal, became a cruel megalomaniac and soon claimed that he was God himself.

He accordingly ordered all his subjects to worship him as God on pain of death if they did not and his icons were placed in all the temples.  The population became completely enshrouded in fear and lost all hope. At this point, Prahalad, the king’s young son and heir, publicly declared that his father was not God and that he would continue to worship Lord Vishnu.

The citizenry was buoyed up with a new hope and the king decided that Prahalad must be eliminated.  Therefore, he built a huge pyre and ordered his sister, Holika, a witch whom fire could not harm, to take hold of Prahalad and sit on the pyre. It was then lit and burnt all night.  The next morning, Prahalad was seen standing among the cinders unharmed, while Holika had been burnt to ashes.  The population broke into spontaneous rejoicing and began dancing, singing and sprinkling each other with coloured water and named the day Holi which came to be celebrated as the triumph of Good over Evil and Truth over Untruth.

The king had now become enraged and went to the main temple at worship time at dusk and strutted about shouting that he was God and that he would defeat any other claiming himself to be God.  In his rage, he struck one of the temple’s pillars with his sword and unexpectedly Narsingha, Lord Vishnu in the form of a man-lion appeared and the king immediately attacked him.   As they struggled, they came to the door of the temple and fell to the steps.  Narsingha managed to get hold of Hiranya Kasipu by the throat, lifted him and strangled him to death.  He was killed neither by Man nor animal; at dusk, neither night nor day; and was throttled when he was raised off the ground.  The rejoicing at Holika’s death continued on Hiranya Kasipu’s.

A third tradition of Phagwah is that it commemorates the return of Lord Rama from his 14-year exile to reassume the kingship of Ayodhya. The citizens were so overwhelmed with joy that they lit up the streets and their homes with diyas to express their happiness and to illuminate the streets for Lord Rama and his entourage.  The tradition of lighting diyas persists in Phagwah celebrations in Guyana.

In colonial Guyana, the celebration of Phagwah was a holiday in the sugar estates and neighbouring villages.  After Independence, it was declared a public holiday and was extended to the whole nation, where it is now celebrated in all its facets by all religious and ethnic groups, manifesting the growing integration of Guyanese society.