A Brief History of Holi
The Festival of Colour
This week marks the arrival of Holi, India’s most colourful festival.
It signals the arrival of spring celebrates the victory of good over evil and is probably Indias most famous festival abroad. But it is also one of India’s most ancient festivals, and evidence of spring 'colour festivals' go back thousands of years.
Today, we’re tracing the origins of Holi.
A Legend of Fiery Devotion
There are many regional stories that explain why the festival is celebrated but the most popular one surrounds prince Prahlada and his tyrannical father, King Hiranyakashipu of Multan:
The story goes that King Hiranyakashipu, having been granted near-immortality by the gods, grew arrogant and demanded absolute devotion—not to the divine, but to himself.
Yet his own son, Prahlada, defied him, remaining steadfast in his worship of Vishnu. Hiranyakashipu tried everything to kill his disobediant son—throwing him off cliffs, poisoning his food, unleashing wild elephants—but each time, Vishnu intervened.
Finally, the king turned to his sister, Holika, who possessed a magical boon making her immune to fire. Holika lured Prahlada into sitting with her on a blazing pyre, assuming the flames would consume him. But divine justice had other plans. Holika burnt instead, and Prahlada emerged from the flames unharmed.
Shortly after, Vishnu appeared in his terrifying half-man, half-lion form—Narasimha—and tore the wicked king apart.
To this day, on the eve of Holi, bonfires are lit across India in a ritual called Holika Dahan, symbolizing the triumph of good over evil, devotion over tyranny, and perhaps, a reminder that no power—divine or human—can hold absolute sway forever.
‘But where do the colours come in?’ I hear you ask.
Well, generations later, Vishnu came back to earth as Krishna. The mischievous, blue-skinned god, envious of Radha’s fair complexion, once smeared her face with colour. That playful act transformed over time into the modern-day revelry of throwing coloured powders and squirting friends and strangers alike with ‘pichkari’ water guns.
Origins
How far back do we have evidence of people playing holi? No one is quite sure, but from the 3rd century BC - the dawn of writing in South Asia - we have inscription in the Sitabenga caves of Chattisgarh about a spring festival "of the vernal full-moon, when frolics and music abound." By the 2nd century BCE, Jaimini’s Mimamsa Sutras also mentions a ‘festival of colours.’
Its difficult to know, of course, whether this was the same as modern Holi and the first unequivical mention of Holi only comes from the 7th century Sanskrit drama ‘Ratnavali.’
Meanwhile, images of the Holika story precede images of the actual festival by a good five hundred years. In particular, iconography of Narasimha ripping King Hiranyakashipu apart abounds from about the 5th century.
In the 12th century that finally get sculptures of people actually playing Holi.
Perhaps the first image is from a Hoysala temple at Belur. See at the the bottom right of this sculpture a depiction of a god’s attendants filling pichkari water guns.
From this point on images of Holi revelry abounds across South Asia - from the sculptures of Hampi to the paintings of Rajputana.
Holi in the Courts of Islam
Contrary to popular belief, Holi was not just celebrated by Hindus in the medeival period. It also flourished in the courts of the Sultans and Mughals, and in the 13th century, the poet and inventor of Qawwali Amir Khusrau writes:
kheluungii holi, Khaaja ghar aaye,
dhan dhan bhaag hamare sajni,
Khaaja aaye aangan mereI shall play Holi as Khaaja has come home,
blessed is my fortune, o friend,
as Khaaja has come to my courtyard
Indeed the very first miniatures depicting Holi actually emerge from the Ahmadnagar Sultanate, showing women joyously filling their pichkaris.
This sultanate employed the grandparents of Chattrapati Shivaji, and can be seen as a precursor of the Marathas.
Later, the Mughal Emperor Akbar took to the tradition, and Holi became a staple of the Mughal court, known as Eid-e-Gulaabi or Aab-e-Pashi (the Festival of Colours or the Festival of Sprinkling Water).
Miniatures depict several Mughal Emperors soaked in pinks and reds, and Holi celebrations in the Red Fort continued for generations.
Holi in Braj
Nowhere in the Mughal Empire would Holi celebrations be more extravagant than in the land of Krishna—Braj.
Situated around the twin towns of Mathura and Vrindavan, where Krishna is believed to have spent his childhood, Braj had been undergoing a massive religious revival ever since a Bengali Saint called Chaintanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1533 CE) had 'rediscovered' the region in the early 1500s.
So, in 1598, Emperor Akbar ordered four brahmins - Bhattacharya, Chintamani Bhat, Upendra Misra and Bhat Pandit - to determine grants given to 35 different temples across Braj and help rebuild the region as a major Vaishanv centre.
As temples were erected across Braj, so a series of new Holi traditions were established. To this day, Holi celebrations here stretches on for weeks, culminating in a series of grand spectacles.
At the Banke Bihari Temple in Vrindavan, for example, priests and devotees engage in a playful exchange of colours, using flower petals and natural dyes, while temple musicians perform devotional songs known as bhajans to heighten the spiritual fervour.
One of Braj’s most unique Holi traditions is Lathmar Holi, celebrated in Barsana, the village of Radha. Here, women playfully beat men with sticks, reenacting Krishna's legendary attempts to tease Radha and her friends. The men, armed only with shields, take the playful thrashing in stride, making it one of the most distinctive and beloved Holi customs in the country.
Holi in the Sikh Empire
Holi saw another major transformation under Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth guru of the Sikhs. In 1701, amidst the Shivalik hills on the modern border of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab, Guru Gobind Singh began a three day festival of ‘Hola Mohalla’, celebrating the Sikh military tradition.
In the ‘Hola’ festival, Sikhs from across the country would gather at Anandpur Sahib, the domain of the guru on the Shivalik hills and perform military exercises and a mock fight, displaying their military prowess. The timing of the festival was also crucial as this was a time when the guru was engaged in conflict with the neighboring hill states, vassals of the vast Mughal Empire, which was threatening the Sikhs.
It was meant as a way to prepare Sikhs for an imminent battle with the Mughals that would ensue a few years later.
300 years on, Hola Mohalla is still celebrated with pomp and show in Anandpur Sahib and many other Sikh shrines across the world, where military display blends beautifully with colours.
The Sikh Empire soon expanded into the city of Multan in modern Pakistan which had long been associated with the legend of Prahlad and Holika. As a result a temple dedicated to the legend of Prahlada was soon built on the ancient Multani mound, just opposite the Sufi shrine of Bahauddin Zakaria.
The origins of the temple are obscure, but it saw major renovations under the Sikh rule, specifically during Multan’s diwani under Sawan Mal. Holi also features in the writings of Guru Arjan, the fifth guru of the Sikhs, comparing the rich colors of holi festival with the love of God. Compiled in the Sri Guru Granth Sahib, it goes:
Aaj hamaarai banae faag
Prabh sangee mil khaelan laag
Holee keenee santh saev
Rang laagaa ath laal dhaevToday, I am celebrating the festival of Phalgun.
Joining with God's companions, I have begun to play.
I celebrate the festival of Holi by serving the Saints.
I am imbued with the deep crimson color of the Lord's Divine Love.
For its nature of bringing people together, men and women alike, Holi saw backlash in colonial Punjab at the height of religious reform. In the 1890s, Hindu and Sikh reformers in Punjab realized how Holi flouted the gender segregation that was dominant in the patriarchal society of the time.
As a result, the Punjab Purity Association of ‘reform minded men’ in Lahore launched their own sanitized version of Holi called the ‘Pavitra Holi’, the pure Holi, where instead of people playing with colours and water guns, the ‘elders’ organized ‘satsangs’ or congregations in the various gardens across the city, where people gathered to sing passages from the Vedas and the Guru Granth Sahib.
In March 1947, as India and Pakistan were divided, Multan saw some of the worst communal riots, bypassing any which had occurred before then. Months of rioting resulted in the ethnic cleansing of the Multani Hindus, Sikhs and Jains who had lived in the city for centuries. Amidst this frenzy, the sacred idols inside the Prahlad Temple of Multan also found themselves ‘migrating’ towards the Indian side of the new border.
The idol of the Narsimha avatar of Vishnu, which was the primary object of veneration in the Prahlad temple of Multan reached Hardiwar in 1947, and has remained there since.
The temple of Prahlad itself, meanwhile, continued standing abandoned in Multan until 1992, when a frenzied mob razed it to the ground, justifying it as a ‘revenge’ for the demolition of the Babri Mosque in India. With this, the last signs of Holi’s long mythological history in Multan disappeared forever and forgotten!
But even if the festival of Prahlad and Holika has now dissapeared from their birthplace, it has since spread across the world, particularly among the Indian diaspora. In cities like New York, London, and Los Angeles, Holi festivals now attract diverse crowds eager to partake in the joy of colors, music, and dance.
It’s a celebration of chaos, and a reminder that no matter how dark the world may seem, light, love, and a little bit of colour will always triumph.
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