Holi One Festival in Cape Town and Discomfort with Appropriation

http://norient.com/en/stories/holi-southafrica/

"...besides the really fucking terrible music, and exploiting someone’s else’s sacred festival…I get to get drunk with my friends for a massive fee."

One of my most uncomfortable experiences (and biggest surprises) while living in Cape Town was the Holi One Festival. I had heard nothing of it beforehand, and was told it was a Hindu color festival. So, I went along with some housemates, expecting lots of Indians, Hindu rituals, and delicious Indian dishes. It was at the Grand Parade grounds in the city center, the very same historic ground where Nelson Mandela made a moving speech near the end of the apartheid regime.

Anywho, after taking the minibuses or a cab (can't remember which method of transportation we used, though we certainly took a cab back) to the city center and walking a block or two, we arrived at the entrance to the festival. It was not what I expected. Hordes of white people from South Africa and abroad were there, waiting in huge lines while chatting, drinking, and smoking until they could enter the festival grounds.

I wish I had just stayed home. The rest of the day (after waiting in an endless line) was spent listening to trashy European-influenced electronic music and related garbage. The aforementioned hordes of vanilla-colored faces danced, drink, threw colored powder around themselves and in the air, and drink copious amounts of alcohol (some smoked marijuana and probably used other narcotics, too). I stuck around with housemates for a few hours (I guess we had to after paying so much, R290, and waiting in that queue for so long) but quickly grew bored. I suppose it was nice to see all these 'adults' enjoy throwing colored powder at each other and in the air, but it was certainly offensive appropriation of the Hindu religious festival.

 I saw no people of Indian descent, the music, alcohol and drunken revelry were thoroughly removed from any Hindu meaning. Looking back, I am more than a little uncomfortable and ashamed of my participation in such foolishness. Of course, none of my mostly European housemates at the time seemed uncomfortable or anything, but that's no surprise. They're used to neoliberal colorblindness in European contexts and some said some of the most absurd and offensive things I've ever heard. Besides, some of them were likely used to this ridiculous appropriation of a Hindu celebration on the arrival of Spring (though the Hindu calendar is obviously different from the Western calendar and spring arrives at different times in South Asia versus, say, Germany, where much of the musicians/DJs came from.

Read some links to other articles on cultural appropriation of Holi and Indian cultures and religious holidays, here. It just doesn't right to 'celebrate' Holi in a way that trivializes and commercializes the Hindu significance and history so that whites have a fun and 'colorful' way of getting drunk. But hey, that's nothing new! As the internet world knows very well, many whites dressed up for 'ghetto parties' or donned racist costumes. If only Indian folks and some aspect of India's vast array of cuisines and Hindu rituals were at least mentioned or explained, the festival would not have been a gigantic insult to Hinduism. Again, I was expecting a 'real' Hindu event with families and all that, not hordes of white people dancing to bad music. Different strokes for different folks, I guess, different strokes for different folks.

http://norient.com/en/stories/holi-southafrica/
http://thisisnotindia.tumblr.com/post/28576930986/the-color-run-is-the-most-cultural-appropriative-shit
http://www.capetownmagazine.com/holi-one
http://browngirlmagazine.com/2013/04/color-run-controversy/
http://modgepodgefeminism.wordpress.com/tag/holi/
http://leilahlatief.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/how-holi-are-you/
http://africasacountry.com/what-the-post-racials-are-looking-for/