“The Playful Seduction of Colors: Chanting ‘Hare Krishna’ by Accident.” A reflection by Amanda Lucia.

“Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Ram Hare Ram, Ram Ram Hare Hare!!” The mahamantra (the most significant chant) of the Hare Krishnas reverberates throughout soccer fields, parks, and their own temple grounds as the Festival of Colors brings the Hindu Spring festival of Holi to American audiences across the nation. The caravan that carries the Festival of Colors travels widely, but focuses on urban areas that are drivable distances from the central temple in Spanish Fork, Utah, namely the southwest and California. The model is similar to International Society for Krishna Consciousness’s (ISKCON’s) Festival of India, which is also a festival with a traveling, proselytizing mission aimed at bringing Krishna consciousness to the American masses under the rubric of cultural exchange. But the Festival of Colors has a significant advantage. The founders have rightly assessed that Americans, particularly those in their teens and twenties, like to throw powdered colors at each other (and post pictures of themselves doing so on social media). The Festival of Colors brings together color play with a full day of music erupting from multiple stages, excellent vegetarian food vendors, and booths of palmistry, Ayurveda, Indic clothing, jewelry, and ephemera. The founders of the Festival of Colors have tapped into the increasing popularity of music festivals among American youth  – and as a result, hundreds of thousands of young Americans are chanting Hare Krishna.

The Hindu festival of Holi celebrates the arrival of Spring with communal revelry in the throwing of colors. Historically, Holi was celebrated communally and there are multiple accounts of Hindus, Muslims, and Jains playing Holi together as a communal Spring festival. Similarly, today, Holi provides opportunities for non-Hindus to participate in a fun, community activity based in Hindu traditions, but without demand for adherence to Hinduism. Holi is perennially linked with communal levity, and the festival provides an opportunity for communities to come together in fun and playfulness regardless of the personal religious beliefs of the participants. Its bawdy experimentation with social ordering provides fecund opportunities to investigate normative social contexts through the unusual public display of social inversions. The playful inversions inherent within the festival bolster its radically democratic and inclusivistic ethos.

In the diasporic context of the United States, Indian Hindu communities usually celebrate Holi as a cultural event in Hindu temples and sponsored by South Asian organizations on college campuses. But recently, devotees related to ISKCON have established a traveling Festival of Colors that celebrates the Indian Hindu spring festival of Holi and actively proselytizes to non-Hindu audiences. The Festival of Colors travels throughout the United States and culminates at the organizers’ home temple in Spanish Fork, Utah where 65,000 people attended in 2014. Each year the festival is growing in the multiple cities where it is held; nearly all 2015 figures exceeded those of 2014. Some reporters suggested 80,000 people attended the Spanish Fork Festival of Colors in 2015. The founder of the Festival of Colors, Caru Das, has used the playful fun of throwing colors and Holi to translate Krishna Consciousness across the Indic cultural divide to non-Hindu American audiences.

In Utah, the Caru Das’s ISKCON temple has built allegiances with Mormon community leaders by presenting the Holi festival as playful and substance-free entertainment for Mormon youth. Even though organizers recognize that most Mormons are “pretty committed” to their religion and won’t “become devotees,” still the festival exposes non-Hindu youth to Hindu devotional the most important of Hare Krishna practices, chanting the name of Krishna. As one of the organizers explained, even if attendees do not become Krishna devotees, still the music at the festival plants the seed of chanting Krishna’s name. In ISKCON theology, even if someone chants ‘Hare Krishna’ only once, it still has meritorious spiritual value. Although a local Spanish Fork Baptist church has initiated a campaign protesting the “devil worship” they believe to be at the heart of Hinduism, the dominant community of Mormons have supported their Hindu neighbors and encourage their children to freely engage in the Festival of Colors.

In Utah, the color festival organizers emphasize Mormon values from the stage by making references to the importance of sobriety, morality, and a singular creator God who protects all peoples of all faiths. Furthermore, there are informational stations that aim to show similarities in opinions on the importance of vegetarianism  between the founding prophets of Mormonism and A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founding guru of ISKCON. The temple also hosts placards that show parallels in the Mormon and ISKCON veneration of continual divine revelation through a lineage of living prophets. But despite these attempts at religious outreach, there is no question that it is ISKCON’s mahamantra of “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Ram Hare Ram, Ram Ram Hare Hare” that reverberates throughout the festival. In fact, the organizers continually encouraged the musical acts to return their musical expressions to the mahamantra, and to incite the impassioned crowd to chant it in call and response forms. They also invite famous musicians who identify with and participate in the Hare Krishna movement or the Hindu kirtan (devotional music) scene more broadly to guide audiences through call and response kirtan sets for the duration of the Holi festival.

Holi symbolizes the love play of Radha and Krishna, as they delighted in the throwing of colors marking each other with their love. As such, Holi is one of the most cherished festivals among Hindu Krishna devotees (bhaktas). It also signifies the defeat of the evil demoness, Holika, from whom the festival’s name derives. In Hindu mythology, the story goes that a woman, Holika, is given the boon of being immune to fire, and she begins to use her power for ill will, burning children to death and so on. One day she takes a small boy, Prahlad, into the fire to murder him. But Prahlad is a boy who has utmost devotion to Krishna and he chants a powerful mantra to Krishna and his escapes the fire unharmed while Holika is burned to death. The burning of Holika during Holi signifies the conquest of good over evil and the power of mantra recitation. In our interview with some of the Baptist protesters of the Festival of Colors, leaders of the campaign highlighted the ritualistic “burning of the witch” as evidence of the festival’s devilish and dangerous underpinnings. But the youth in attendance at the festival seemed not to concern themselves. On the second day of the Spanish Fork festival in 2014, cold rain was falling and a group of twenty teenagers were huddled around the roaring fire that was swiftly encompassing the demoness Holika. When asked, only one of the teens could explain what had been burned or why. The others were more concerned with the fun of the colors and the warmth of the fire than any theological signification. Interestingly, in 2015, several families of South Asian descent attentively observed the ritual burning of the demoness, Holika.

In general, the Festival of Colors attracts majority non-Hindu youth who are happy to throw colors, dance, and revel with their large groups of non-Hindu friends. The Festival of Colors celebrations in California cities largely reflect the diversity of those cities, albeit with higher than normal representation of South Asians. Most of the revelers are young, in their teens and twenties, and many are reasonably familiar with a California-style liberal multiculturalism, wherein different language, cultures, and religions often brush up against each other and intermingle in the course of daily living. Many of these attendees have been to services and celebrations in religious venues other than those of their own familial traditions as a matter of course in the process of growing up in this diverse religious and cultural environment. They often take the literature provided by the Hare Krishnas and chant loudly in call and response fashion to the mahamantras issuing from the musicians. To celebrate Holi with the Hindus is neither unusual nor demanding of a religious commitment. It is merely “fun” with the opportunity for a new “cultural experience” that attendees believe honor Hindu traditions.

In Utah as well, the attendees recount that participating in Holi is a way to experience “something different” and honor Hindu culture while having a lot of fun. Like in California, here the demographic reflects the population of the local area, only in this region, the local population is predominantly white and Mormon. Because of their strong religious connections, only a few of the Mormon youth at Spanish Fork stopped to read the copies of the Bhagavad-Gita that were thrust into their hands or shared the devotional attitudes of the kirtan musicians as they were encouraged to chant Krishna’s name. Some were even uncomfortable about what they would do with the copies of the Bhagavad Gita that they had been given, and others ignored (or refused) calls from the stage to chant the mahamantra. Still, devotion to Krishna has found an unlikely home in Utah among the Mormons, where there is a cultural affinity because of dominant feelings of respect for strong religious convictions, whatever they may be. In Utah, talking about God and one’s devotional commitments are often regarded as open topics of conversation, and they are topics that are of great concern for a strong majority of the population. It is likely for this religious affinity and for the commitment to substance-free fun that Krishna devotionalism has found an unlikely collaborative home among the Mormons of Utah.

The Festival of Colors aims to be a captivating event that lures youth into its fold with lively music, food vendors, and the throwing of colors – and youth are responding very favorably. Large numbers of attendees revel in the fun of abandoning conventional roles and appearances to blend together as one tribe adorned with a wild rainbow of colored powder. Interestingly, in Utah, youthful attendees were particularly interested in the culturally transgressive acts of physicality with the opposite sex that were readily available during the Festival of Colors. Some teens told our team that the festival is known to be a good place to “hook up.” Some of the youth painted “free hugs” on their bodies, inviting strangers to hug them, while others carried signs reading the same. Some girls wore more revealing clothing than they normally were allowed, while others stripped down to bras and tank tops upon arriving at the festival (beyond the watchful gaze of their parents and deacons). One teen told our researchers that someone at school had said he was planning to “do weed” at the festival, but she said that the majority of her friends don’t do that and just come to have fun. A parking attendant in Utah complained that many of the cars smelled like marijuana, but in contrast the festival organizers work very hard to repeatedly “sell” the festival from the stage as a drug-free event and they have a zero tolerance policy for drugs, alcohol, and inebriation. In fact, Caru Das, the festival organizer, routinely encourages attendees from the stage to find everlasting joy in God rather than fleeting joy in substance abuse.

It is particularly interesting that in India, where there are also tight restrictions on male-female bodily contact, Holi also provides a social vent for sexuality. In other words, in both contexts, some men view Holi as an opportunity to touch women in ways they wouldn’t otherwise be allowed to do. In India, there is also the widespread consumption of bhang, a marijuana or hash-based ball often accompanied by a lassi or yogurt-shake. As a result, it is quite common that women often play Holi with trusted family and friends on their home balconies or in private parties, while men roam the streets playing Holi with strangers. In both India and Spanish Fork, Utah, Holi provides the temporary release of societal restrictions on touch and sexual behavior (and to a lesser extent marijuana consumption) where there are dominant and restrictive religious conventions. Interestingly, viewing Holi as an opportunity for transgression in this traditional manner is quite dissimilar to behavior in the liberal multicultural context of California. It was notable at the California-based Festival of Colors, there was no evidence that the Festival of Colors marked a particularly important break from any social norms or conventions. If anything, attendees saw Holi as a religious event of cultural importance and as such they were respectful, if not reverent. There was little evidence of sexualized behavior or drug or alcohol use.

In both environments, the playfulness of color throwing augments the social media centrism of American youth culture as attendees delight in their radically altered appearances and playfully mark the bodies and faces of their friends with an array of colored powders. The Festival of Colors accentuates this aspect of the festival with a sponsored photo booths and reminders from the stage to hashtag #festivalofcolorsusa in their online posts.

Despite its proselytizing mission, the Spanish Fork, Utah Festival of Colors unites two distinct communities in a fascinating moment of solidarity. Both the Hare Krishnas and the Mornons are minority religions in the United States, and both have a history of discrimination and persecution. In both contexts, for the duration of the festival, these attendees chant the name of Krishna, are presented with Hindu scriptures, and participate in a festival deeply rooted in Hinduism and Indic culture more generally. But because the Festival of Colors in Utah is built on an alliance between NRMs, a solidarity in the face of persecution, it is much more likely that the Hare Krishna’s proselytization efforts will succeed more effectively outside of Utah where the religious commitments of young attendees are less communally entrenched. Many of the youth of Los Angeles arrive at the festival impressionable and untethered to a particular religious community. It is likely that ISKCON’s proselytization efforts will be more successful as these attendees connect fond memories of the festival with the chanting of the mahamantra, take home Hindu scriptures, and leave with future invitations to yoga and free communal meals at local ISKCON Hindu temples. In these non-Mormon environments where religious commitments among youth are often more porous, the Festival of Colors campaign has the potential to become a potentially influential religious ambassador spreading the message of Krishna consciousness.

It is also important to remember that the Hare Krishnas are a not a form of traditional Hinduism, though they trace their lineage to 15^th century Gaudiya Vaishnavims. However, their movement was founded in 1965 and their members consist of largely Caucasian converts. While ISKCON temples were sometimes an important cultural resource for newly arrived immigrant Indian Hindus. As these Indian Hindu communities grow in numbers, they tend to establish their own temples in a more traditional fashion, separate from the Hare Krishnas. In these more traditional temples, Indian Hindu communities tend to celebrate Holi with internal communal celebrations among other Indian Hindus. Festival occasions occur in temple and domestic environments, and cater to ethnic communal sensibilities (providing opportunities for cultural programming, food, networking, community building, and so on). Indian Hindu Holi festivals are ethno-cultural events, not proselytizing religious events aimed at non-Hindus. In most cases, they are promoted within the Indian Hindu community as purely secular, fun, celebrations of the beginnings of Spring. Furthermore, the majority of Indian Hindus would argue that Hinduism is not a proselytizing religion and they would not seek to represent it as such.

Hindu new religious movements, however, do not often abide by the traditional norms of Hinduism. ISKCON (and other guru-led movements like it) often adopt proselytizing missions that aim to gather followers from global audiences. To achieve this goal, they must create opportunities to introduce their particular theologies and practices to non-Indian Hindu audiences. The Festival of Colors is a perfect example of a bridging event that reaches out to American youth in the void created by the insularity of the diasporic Indian Hindu community. It creates the unusual situation wherein a NRM, largely orchestrated and administered by white converts aims to educate and proselytize to American youth as both cultural and religious ambassadors for their own particular version of Hinduism. As is well known, the context of American multiculturalism encourages ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities to retain their heritage and present it with presumed authenticity in the public sphere. The Festival of Colors shows that while Indian Hindus recreate their long-standing traditions of cultural and religious insularity, white converts have stepped into the void to represent and proselytize to American audiences in their stead.