Talk:Holi

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Discussion for: Holi • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

The page covers the Hindu spring festival as it bears on cannabis: the bhang drinks and sweets taken at it, the evidence of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1893–94), practice at Mathura and in Bengal and Bihar, licensed sale then and now, and modern law and enforcement in India and Nepal. General background on the festival is kept to the bonfire, the colours and the regional names. The preparations themselves are covered on Bhang, Thandai and Majoun; the religious setting of bhang on Cannabis in Hinduism and Maha Shivaratri.

Data verification

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Discussion

Sources

• Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). The report (vol. I) summarises the evidence on festivals in chapter IX, "Social and religious customs", province by province. The witnesses quoted give written answers to the commission's printed questions; most of what they say about Holi answers question 32, on social and religious customs. Their offices and places are given as printed at the head of each witness's evidence (vols. IV to VII). The provincial memoranda in vol. III describe the excise arrangements of the time.
• Crooke (1894), An Introduction to the Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, gives the stories of the Holi fire and draws on F. S. Growse's account of Holi in the Mathura district.
• Lynch (1990), "The Mastram", is an ethnography of the Chaube Brahmans of Mathura, from fieldwork in Mathura; it describes practice in 1982.
• Hasan (1975) describes a village near Lucknow studied in 1959–60.
• Chattopadhyaya (2026), Ganja Matters, is a history of cannabis in British India; its coda summarises H. C. Mookerjee's essays of 1948–49.
• Modern practice, sale and enforcement are taken from news reports, each attributed in the article, and from one case report in Toxicology Reports (2024).

Social custom or religious observance

The commission found its witnesses "about equally divided" on whether bhang at Holi was a social custom or part of religious observance. Dharma Nand Joshi (Garhwal) called it meritorious though not essential; Mohim Chunder Roy (Rajshahi) called it entirely social; Gour Das Bysack (Calcutta) wrote that bhang sherbet was offered at Holi "as a part of the religious observance".

What majum was made from

The witnesses describe majum made from different parts of the plant. In Meerut it was bhang boiled in ghi; the Central Provinces memorandum calls it a confection of ganja, ghi and sugar; at Almora it was made with "the essence of ganja".

Bhang at Dol Jatra

In 1894 Rasik Lal Ghose (Dinajpur) tied bhang on Dol Jatra or Holi to "the up-country people", and use by others to the Dasami and Kali Puja days; Bysack likewise set Bijoya in Bengal beside Holi in the Upper Provinces. The 2022 Press Trust of India report says without qualification that people in West Bengal drink bhang on Dol Jatra. Which communities in Bengal take bhang at Dol Jatra today is not established by these sources.

The Saharanpur statement

J. F. Tuohy's remark that anyone who did not drink bhang at Holi "was not a Hindu" reports what one jail prisoner told him; Tuohy wrote that only one prisoner gave him any information on the point.