The Fall Woman

WHEN THE NIGHT before Holi is celebrated across India, there will be bonfires lit and oblations performed around it. Es­pecially in the hinterland, men, women and children hypnotised by licks of fire curling into the night sky will mark the death of a woman who tried to meddle with the design of gods and, obviously, got out­smarted. The demon Holika endures in the present as a memory of an evil but, then, is it also perhaps time to ask—does she deserve it?

Holi has its origins as a spring festival from an ancient unknown past and, it is in the nature of religious evolution, to add myths to make up origin stories. Any kernel of reality that ever existed to these legends is long lost, but they do provide informa­tion about the nature of the society that once existed. Here, these stories about Holi's origins come to us from the Puranas and they are written by the Brahmins because they were the only literate class then. This particular myth is a paean to the god Vishnu, and so it was probably the Vaishnavites who weaved it into the festival. The story is straightforward enough: an Asura king Hiranyakashyap, who has a boon of immortality with a loophole, has an issue with Vishnu but his own son Prahlada turns out to be a devotee. He tries different ways to kill the boy and one of the attempts is through his sister Holika who is immune to fire. She sits on a pyre with Prahlada but is burnt to death instead.

Some interesting questions can be posed about Holika. There is really nothing for her to gain in this dispute between men, from the god to the king to the boy. Why then does she even par­ticipate in attempting the murder? Did she have any agency to refuse? If she did not, what is the extent of her culpabil­ity that she should still be demonised? Isn't she then a reflection of women through the ages in a male-driven world where their will was made subservient to the interests of men? That could be a feminist vision of Holika.

There is also another interpretation possible. If there are so many ways in which Prahlada was tried to be killed, why is it that only Holika's memory survives to the present as an an­nual event? Hinduism evolved into a religion by incorporating local deities across the region in one common framework and depending on their popularity, each found their place in the pantheon's hierarchy. Gods like Ganesha and Ayyappa who rose to the top are instances of it. There must also have been innumerable deities who became footnotes and erased from worship and memory. That Holika is still present today is then an indication of her own longevity. Was she once upon a time worshipped around a fire and what we see today is a remembrance of it? A deity that has been changed in tone by storytellers but who was simply too important to be discarded from the story.