Camille Rasor | Reporter
Colorful powder covered Fountain Mall and the Baylor community on Thursday as the Indian Subcontinent Student Association celebrated their fourth annual all-campus Holi festival.
Holi, also known as the Festival of Colors, is a Hindu festival that originated in India but has since spread to places in the Indian subcontinent and beyond. The festival celebrates the coming of spring and the triumph of good over evil.
“We really just want to spread our culture around Baylor’s campus and show the traditions that we celebrate and the festivals that we have,” Burleson senior Krishna Jayaswal, president of ISSA, said.
Holi will be celebrated around the world on March 10, but ISSA decided to celebrate on Thursday because the international celebration will happen while students are away from campus for spring break.
The celebration began with music and dance performances by Baylor students, then continued with everyone grabbing bags of colored Holi powder and throwing them at each other.
“The diverse colors represent facing adversity and creating a unified unit,” Euless sophomore Inaara Tharani, one of ISSA’s social chairs who was involved in planning and facilitating the event said.
Jayaswal spoke on both the modern and traditional significance of the colors within Hindu culture, and the different meanings the celebration has carried throughout the years.
“In modern day, people believe it’s also to reduce racism and discrimination because we all get one colorful appearance, which signifies our souls are all one,” Jayaswal said.
Students across campus and people in the Waco community were invited to participate, and people from several different organizations attended the event. By the end of the event, everyone who participated was covered from head to toe in powder.
“We ordered a whole bunch of Holi colors so we could have everyone enjoy,” Arsh Ladhani, the other ISSA social chair, said. “We’re opening up all the packets, we’re putting them in four different corners so everyone can go get some packets, run to the middle and then just explode the entire field.”
Tharani said she was very thankful that Baylor was so inclusive of ISSA’s culture and traditions.
“We feel like it’s important for us to commemorate our culture and bring it to the campus, a campus that’s predominantly Christian,” Tharani said. “We want to thank Baylor and all the staff members for being so welcoming and open to our culture and our religion.”
