Imagine Muslims playing Holi on the way to namaz—why can’t this be India’s normal?

Indian Muslims have already been celebrating Holi and other Hindu festivals on social media. Why not make this virtual trend a ground reality?

A young nobleman enjoying Holi with his consort. Attributed to the artist Nidhamal, Lucknow, 1760-5. British Library, Add.Or.5700

Imagine this: a band of Muslims, dressed in white kurta-pyjamas, heading to the Jama Masjid for Juma namaz, and playing Holi along the way. Their cheeks smeared with gulal, their clothes splashed with colour. Hard to visualise? Yet that’s exactly what Maulana Hasrat Mohani, the famous Urdu poet, freedom fighter, and member of the Constituent Assembly, did year after year. A devotee of Krishna, he would celebrate Holi and then offer namaz in the same colour-soaked clothes. The Holi colours never spoiled his ritual ablution—Wazu—or invalidated his namaz.

Imagine, too, Nazir Akbarabadi — the people’s poet, rooted in cultural pluralism — reciting his numerous Holi poems to the applause of a predominantly Muslim audience. And let’s not forget the Mughal emperors and the Nawabs of Awadh, who hosted grand Holi celebrations.

Of course, this was a beautiful, niche tradition rather than a widespread phenomenon.

Ideally, when a Hindu and a Muslim festival fall on the same day, it should be an opportunity for twofold celebrations — a godsend for deepening interfaith understanding and engagement. It would fit into the idealised cultural matrix of Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb, and be an emblem of the Hindu-Muslim Bhai Bhai bonhomie. It should be a testament to how secularism isn’t just lauded in literature but practiced in everyday life.

But, alas, we don’t live in a world of poetic idealism. Our collective attitudes are shaped by deeply ingrained religious antipathies and ideological antagonisms.

Holi and namaz in post-Islamic era?

In Sambhal, an unseemly controversy has broken out over how to celebrate Holi while also attending Juma (Friday) namaz — around the same time on 14 March. But first, let it be clarified that, unlike Holi, Juma is not a festival. It’s a weekly, early afternoon prayer, with Muslims gathering at the mosque in much larger numbers than for any of the five daily prayers. Since this is the month of Ramzan, with many Muslims fasting, the rush to the mosque for Juma namaz would be far in excess of any other namaz.

But, so what? Why should this be a problem? Why are Muslims being advised to either delay the prayer, or worse, stay home and perform the regular Zuhr namaz instead? That’s because there is a fear that, on their way to the mosque, some Holi reveller on the street might splash colour on them and incite communal violence.

In a normal situation, what could be lovelier than a celebration spilling over a neighbour? And, conversely, what could be sadder if this act became the provocation for a riot? This could happen only when two communities are at war with each other, and their members implacably hostile to each other’s customs, cultures, and festivals.

Islam has been in India for over a thousand years. Though it came with invasions and conquests, Indians — unable to have an aversion towards other religions — never harboured any rancour towards it.

And so, thanks to its political domination, conversions happened on a large scale, and Islam spread widely.

Even after the end of Islamic rule in India, the religion has continued to thrive and flourish. There is hardly a neighbourhood in the country where Islam doesn’t have a presence — and where its festivals and practices are not only tolerated but celebrated and welcomed with embrace. However, it must be recorded that while Islam enjoys a privileged presence everywhere in India, Hinduism doesn’t have the same public space in “Muslim pockets,” which, by their very demography, are characterised as “communally sensitive” or, even worse, “Mini Pakistan”. In such areas, Hindus can’t take out a religious procession or have public celebration of a festival in the same free manner as Muslims do everywhere.

Along with the Sambhal issue, news came about the need for permission to hold Holi celebrations at Aligarh Muslim University, a prominent government institution where Muslims are predominant in all regards — students, faculty, and non-teaching staff. One fails to understand why the question of permission should even arise.

Holi vs Namaz isn’t a Hindu vs Muslim issue

This tension around simultaneous religious celebrations isn’t particularly a Hindu problem. Hindus have been at peace with, rather indulgent of, public displays of Islamic devotion — whether it’s the azan on loudspeakers, namaz offered on railway platforms or even in train aisles.

It’s something for Muslims to work on—their ideologues and narrative makers have built insurmountable barriers of theology in the path of realistic appreciation of other religions. They have imbued the Muslim common sense with a deep loathing for non-Muslim cultures and customs, particularly toward “polytheistic” and “idolatrous” Hindus. This loathing has crept so deep in the Muslim psyche that, for all the talk of pluralism, a pious Muslim brooks the existence of other religions only as a matter of compulsion rather than conviction. In childhood, we were told that if we played Holi, on the Day of Qayamat, flesh would be cut off from wherever colour touched our body.

The Muslim ruling class — the ones who controlled theology and shaped discourse and narrative — considered the Islamisation of the native converts an ineluctable imperative, without which the converts wouldn’t become their support base, loyal soldiers, and committed cannon fodders that they are now. Actually, without such indoctrination against their own culture, the converts wouldn’t get so de-Indianised as to form a separate identity which, even in the post-Islamic era, would continue to contend with Hinduism.

How far it is an inevitable corollary of conversion to Islam is debatable. Iran was one of the earliest conquests of Islam, and within a short span, the entire country was converted. But the Iranians, far advanced in culture as they were compared to their primitive Arab conquerors, never broke away from their past, and though they remained Muslim, they revived their ancient epics, myths, lores, and legends.

Firdawsi, the great Persian poet, wrote the epic poem Shahnameh (The Book of Kings) to celebrate the pre-Islamic grandeur of Iran and revived the memories of the epic heroes such as Afrasiyab and Rustam. In India, however, the nature of Islam has been such that it’s ideologically impossible for an Indian Muslim to celebrate the heroes of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, or even historic figures like Ashoka or Chandragupta. It would be pertinent to remember that Firdawsi was the poet laureate of the infamous Islamic raider, Mahmud of Ghazni. If he could celebrate the glory of his country, why couldn’t Indian Muslims? Even today, the Iranians celebrate the pre-Islamic festival, Nawroz — and so do the Indian Muslim elite of Iranian descent. But Indian Muslims, even native converts, can’t even think of celebrating Holi or Diwali, as they see it as contrary to their religion.

Why Indian Muslims should celebrate Indian festivals

Islam is a puritan religion — dry, stiff, and uptight. Its homeland is the Arabian desert, and it fully reflects the harshness of the desert in its ethos. So, even Eid and Bakrid, the only Islamic festivals, are mere religious rites, and not much of festivals, as they are devoid of fun, frolic, mirth, and merriment, which characterise festivals in general.

Indian festivals, on the other hand, are a celebration of life as they are intricately embedded in the agricultural cycle and the change of seasons. Arabia, being a desert, with hardly any agriculture to speak of, couldn’t celebrate the sowing and reaping, the bounties of the earth, and the blessings of the celestial bodies.

If Indian Muslims (re)started the celebration of Indian festivals, it would not only restore their Indianness but would also humanise Islam by tempering its grim severity. It would make Islam rooted in India and dilute its foreignness. So far, Muslims have been living separately from Hindus. Such indifferent living together doesn’t even qualify for a descriptor like co-existence or modus vivendi. This is plain alienation, whose prognostication can only be dire.

In the last few years, Muslims have already been celebrating Holi and other Hindu festivals on social media. They enthusiastically wish their Hindu friends, and even fellow Muslims. Why not make this virtual trend a ground reality? There could be no greater tribute to the concept of composite culture or the Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb. It would change a lot in India. So, once again, let’s imagine a band of Muslims playing Holi as they walk for namaz to the mosque.

Ibn Khaldun Bharati is a student of Islam, and looks at Islamic history from an Indian perspective. He tweets @IbnKhaldunIndic. Views are personal.

Editor’s note: We know the writer well and only allow pseudonyms when we do so.

(Edited by Prashant)