Reimagining festivals with freedom

Festivals cannot remain chained to rituals of division, but should be living classrooms of democracy

- Siddhesh Gautam

Festivals in India are always about gathering. Streets swelling with people, kitchens flooding with smells, drums beating louder than memory.

But the question is never just what we celebrate. It is also who gets to gather and celebrate, and under what terms. The answers are rarely innocent. They carry centuries of exclusion, of walls around holy sites, of rules about who could touch water, of songs that only some were allowed to sing.

Still, against that weight, another current has always flowed. A quieter, riskier, stubborn one. A current where festivals were not tools of control but sparks of freedom. Where joy was not rationed by caste but shared as breath. Where devotion itself was justice. Buddha, Sant Ravidas, Kabir, the Phules, Babasaheb Ambedkar, they all carved out this other history of celebration. And it is this history, often ignored, that might give us a blueprint for the festivals we need today.

Imagine Ravidas, the leatherworker, hammer in one hand and song on his lips. His verses carried people into Begumpura, a city without sorrow, without taxes, without caste. Imagine that as a festival: no barricades, no rules of purity, no humiliation. Just music, community, food and dignity mingling into the air.

Imagine Kabir, he too sang festivals into being. Not the ones of idols and holy sites, but the ones where a weaver's loom was enough to gather people. He mocked the pomp of rituals, yet gave people something bigger to hold on to: a God beyond walls, a love that didn't ask for caste certificates. Imagine their gatherings, where festivals were reimagined as classrooms of dissent. Each song a sermon, each verse a firecracker against hierarchy.

For both Ravidas and Kabir, festivity was rebellion wrapped in rhythm. A reminder that joy can be resistance, and resistance can be joyful.