Holi,known as festival of colours, was celebrated with zeal and vigour in Pakistan

Holi, also known as the festival of colour, was celebrated with zeal and vigour to mark the end of the winter season and to welcome the arrival of spring. The annual event is celebrated with colour, singing, dancing, drum playing and bonfires. Participants chase and cover each other in coloured powder to celebrate the colours of spring. In another ritual, women perform a ‘mock beating’ where they use sticks to beat the men of the local village.

Although the festival is primarily observed in India and Nepal, the celebration has spread to parts of Europe and America. Here we look at 29 pictures of how Hindu devotees celebrated Holi this year.The colourful festival of Holi was marked amid bhajans, prayers, dancing and jubilance in Multan,Khanewal,Bahawalpur,Baha

walnagar, Sangarh,Ghotki, Mirpur Khas,Karachi on Sunday as young girls threw colour in the air and children fought playfully with guns filled with coloured water.A large number of men and women applied colour on each other at the local Mandirs.

“Holi is commonly known as the festival of colours alone but it is much more than that,” said a devotee at the temple, Dr Kishore Murad.He explained that they also set an effigy of demon Holika on fire on the first day, burn dry fruits and other pulses in the fire and make Rangoli at the entrance of their houses while different prayers are recited by married and unmarried girls for their future lives.

Women also fast on the day to pray for wealth in their families, he said.Preparing bhojan [food] for the devotees who will visit the temple for prayers all night, the head of the temple, Arjun Maharaj, told The Express Tribune that Holi is celebrated as Holika was defeated, which signifies the victory of good over evil. He explained that Holi is played with colours from 6am till 6pm, adding that the prasad is only halwa, biryani and mithai.The festival lasts

for two days and Holi is played with colours after the Holika Dahan, the burning of Holika’s effigy. Devotees take rounds around the effigy, commonly known as phairay. Even the married couples repeat their rounds to make their marriage bond stronger.After the night of Holika Dahan, women living around the temple collect the ashes in the early hours of the day and release them into the sea, explained one of the devotees, Kavita Kumari.

A devotee, Babeeta Kumari, who has been visiting the Shri Lakshmi Narayan temple every year since her childhood, believes that they feel happy to celebrate Holi freely in Pakistan and never felt like a minority in the country.“This is the most celebrated festivity of Hindus in Karachi,” said another devotee, Dakshna, who came to celebrate Holi with her granddaughters.