SAY NO TO HOLI HOOLIGANISM

Holi is a famous Hindu festival coming up and is celebrated in every part of India with utmost joy and enthusiasm; it’s a festival of colors. The vibrancy of colors brings in a lot of positivity in our lives. The tradition of throwing brightly colored powder and water is said to come from the love story between Radha and Krishna. The festival begins on the night of full moon; fires are lit on every corner of our city to cleanse the air of evil spirits and bad vibes and to symbolize the destruction of the wicked Holika, after whom the festival is named. Followed to the morning, the streets fill with people coloring each other, sharing the sweets, hugging each other with love and brotherhood. But in between celebrating holi the number of hooliganism cases increases every year, we have has seen cases of like of a lady shri ram college for women, posted an account of semen flinging on her instagram, giving an another side of holi which is not bright and the oratory line bura na mano holi hai phrase that covers up the sexual harassment under the façade of celebrations. Another case of knigtengle sahaji , a BA student, JNU too had shared her bad experience of holi by saying people have forcefully put colors on her while trying to grope her. This type of incidents happens in every holi, some are outspoken while many a girls choose to keep quite because of our patriarchal society that will blame the girl by saying, holi me ye chalta hai . Muck, grease , rotten tomatoes, eggs , cow dung, semen, urine are now more popular than pure colors of holi. There have been protests marches in many cities against these repulsive acts of sexual harassments which increase more in holi celebration. Holi has become a struggle for every woman who wants to play holi. The videos of hooliganism prevails in the time of holi, harassing girls is being normalized in the time of celebration, for example last year a video which gone viral in twitter that shows a crowd of men openly harassing women on the road who were managing to find their way amid the traffic as colors were forcibly splashed on them and hence they kept fighting for the freedom we talked about women. Last year 879 cases at Rohtak PGIMS have been reported of injuries in road accidents, clashes with other medical urgencies in the time of holi. Drunk and drive are in the hikes, violence in the streets raise most in the holi. The issue needs to be raised rather than swept under the blanket of traditions. Its high time to stand against and raise our voices otherwise a time will come when there will be no girl in the street playing holi, if the actions are not taken, every girl will live in a fear of getting harassed in the time of holi. It’s been 74th Independence Day and still women lives in fear of going outside and feel the air of freedom. This holi lets come all together, play holi with pure intensions and let the love prevails the world and makes a better place for women. Julie Kakoty 3rd semester Mass communication and journalism Gauhati university