Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mr. Hutchinson and welcome to R.

E.

lesson all about Hinduism.

We've already learnt of this ancient religion and it's origins, how it's developed some of the important ancient texts and stories.

And in today's lesson, we're going to take it to the modern day and we're going to learn a little bit about how Hindus might express their faith today.

Now, of course, Hinduism is a collection of a huge number of ancient traditions and beliefs.

There are hundreds of millions of Hindus and so Hindus don't express their faith in the same ways.

There's a massive diversity, different interpretations, especially lots of different emphasis on different Gods and Goddesses in terms of which are seen as the most important.

And there are, as I've mentioned in previous lessons, perhaps millions of Gods or avatars of Gods, which are worshipped by Hindus today.

But we're going to look at one way in particular, especially in the UK, but also worldwide that Hinduism is expressed and celebrated and that is by looking at a celebration known as a celebration of Holi.

And so by the end of today's lesson, we should be able to answer this question, how to Hindus express their faith today? Just as in all of our lessons, you're going to need something to write on and something to write with, and please make sure that you clear all distractions away.

We will be drawing in today's lesson because I've got another story to tell you.

And so if you've got any art materials that you'd like to help you, then please do feel free to pause the video and grab those now.

So our lesson looks something like this.

First of all, we're going to look at Holi, the festival of colours.

We're then going to look at a story, a legend from one of the Puranas, which is called, Puranas sorry, which is called the Legend of Prahalad and Holika.

And then we'll going to talk a little bit about this festival Holi, how it's celebrated in different ways and perhaps some of the controversies or current discussions, debates around this festival, especially within the UK and western countries.

And I'm using western to mean sort of Europe and America, as opposed to the sub Indian continent, where the religion originated.

Holi: the festival of colours.

So here you can see a picture of Holi being celebrated.

Holi is a really fun and colourful festival, which is celebrated each year.

It celebrates spring coming, love, new life.

Some families might hold religious ceremonies during this festival, but more common it's, it's a time of celebration and fun.

People, you'll especially see lots of dancing and singing and perhaps the main characteristics is that you'll see people with powdered paint and they'll throw powdered paint at each other.

So that everybody becomes very colourful.

They might even have coloured water as well.

So there's lots and lots of very vivid colours and so it makes it very striking festival.

So your first question to lock that in, is this, complete the sentence, Holi is also known as what? The festival of? Pause the video and write out that sentence now.

Great work! Let's see if you are correct.

So you should have written that Holi is known as the festival of colours.

Give yourself a tick if you got that right.

And just edit your answer if you've got it wrong, no problem if you did.

And the basis of Holi, where it all goes back to, is from one of the Puranas and it's known as the Legend of Prahalad and Holika.

There are different versions of this story, lots of different versions.

I'm going to tell you one particular version, but you might hear variants of it.

And it starts like this.

So.

A long, long time ago, there was a King and that King was called Hiranyakashyap.

And this King, Hiranyakashyap, considered himself the ruler of the whole universe, higher than the gods.

He was very arrogant and Hiranyakashyap said I am greater than all of the Gods.

Now, actually he was the King of the demons and he had a sister who was also a demon called Holika.

Hiranyakashyap had a son, his son was called Prahalad.

And Prahalad was hated by his father and he was hated because he worshipped the God, Vishnu.

So Prahalad was the son, and he worshipped Vishnu all of the time and Prahalad's father, Hiranyakashyap hated this.

And he hated it so much that he thought, that he asked his son a question to try and get clear.

"Hold on a second, "who do you think has greater Vishnu or me?" Now Prahalad had to answer, he had to answer honestly.

And he had to say, "well, you're only a King "and Vishnu is a God, so Vishnu is greater than you." Now, as you might imagine, Hiranyakashyap did not like that one bit.

"You're saying that Vishnu is greater than me? "You horrible little boy." He said to his son Prahalad.

And in fact, he was an evil demon and he said he made a really horrible plan.

He said, "I am going to murder my son Prahalad.

"He thinks that Vishnu is better than me, "so I'm going to murder my son, Prahalad." And he tried to murder him in so many different ways.

He tried to trample with elephants, but it didn't work.

He tried to throw him off a cliff, but that didn't work.

He tried to have him bitten by a thousand snakes, but that didn't work.

He even had sent soldiers after him, but every time Prahalad survived and Hiranyakashyap thought, how can I kill my son Prahalad? He's slighted me.

He's insulted me by saying that God is greater than me.

And then he remembered, that his demon sister, Holika could survive fire.

She had a special cloak that would wrap around her and protect her from fire.

So he said, to his demon sister Holika.

"Why don't you take Prahalad in your lap "and then walk into a fire and hold Prahalad in your lap.

"And all of the flames will burn Prahalad to death "and you'll be safe because you've got your cloak." And so Holika said, "no problem, I will do that." And so she took Prahalad into the fire and set the flames alight, and they started to rise and surround Holika and Prahalad.

Now the gods that gave Holika this special cloak realised that she was using it for evil and the Gods thought, that's not the reason that we gave you that special power, that special cloak.

We're in fact, going to take it away from you.

And so the cloak moved away from her, blew off her and on to Prahalad.

Now that made Prahalad immune and from the fire.

And so the flames burned Holika to death and Prahalad was protected by the cloak.

And he was just surrounded by all of these ashes, which formed like a kind of magic powder, a magic sort of colourful powder, because he was protected by this cloak.

Prahalad the whole time had stayed true to his God, to Vishnu and Vishnu is the one that had saved him because he saw the Prahalad always devoted himself to him and so he was the one that had protected him.

He was the one that had decided that I'm going to make sure that you will be safe in the fire with the cloak.

Now Vishnu as you might imagine, had something to say to the evil King Hiranyakashyap.

And so shortly afterwards, Vishnu travelled down in a new avatar, partially lion, partially human and killed the evil King, Hiranyakashyap.

And Prahalad ruled instead and became King and was a wise and devoted ruler devoted to Vishnu and lived a long, long time as King.

The moral of this story is that good always triumphs over evil.

So evil plans trying to torment people following the Gods will never work.

The gods will protect the righteous, protect the good people.

And that's the story of Prahalad and Holika.

What I'd like for you to do, as we've done in previous lessons, is I've left some of the notes up there for you.

Can you draw us a picture saying each, which shows each part of that story with the demon King, Hiranyakashyap, his demon sister Holika, Prahalad, the son, and the whole story of them trying to kill Prahalad, only for Prahalad to survive the flames and become King himself.

So pause the video and see if you can write, see if you can draw pictures for each part of that story now.

Great work.

I'm going to put the pictures back up so you can see if you got something similar to me.

So it should look something like this.

And you might have taken some slightly different pictures.

You might have added in your own notes and if you did well done, this is just a minimum.

I'm sure that lots of you really, really clever, hard working, will be able to add and develop and improve on this and awesome work if you did, I'm really proud of you.

So, this legend is celebrated through this festival of Holi.

It's called Holi the festival today and it's celebrates now, this legend of Prahalad.

In North India, Holi is celebrated by having these colourful festivals and bonfires might be lit around the city and those, and in some places, even a, a sort of like a dummy of Holika.

So a kind of like, they would make a figure of Holika and put that on the bonfire for that to be set alight to remind them of that story.

And they'll also throw that, that powdered paint representing that sort of like magical powdered ash from the story.

We've said before, that Holi is very energetic festival with lots of paint being thrown, really good humoured and we said that it was a festival of the spring and new life as well.

And so it would usually be officially celebrated, the day after the full moon, in a month known as Phalunga and that usually falls, it falls either in February or in March and it follows the moon.

So Hindus will look for that moon in their month of Phalunga and then once they've had a full moon a day after that's, when they will celebrate the, the festival of Holi.

So it's in either February or March, just after that full moon.

So let's see if you can remember the important dates when Holi is celebrated.

Is it celebrated on the day after the full moon, during the month of Phalunga, which falls in January to March.

On the day after the fill moon during the month of Phalunga, which falls in February to March.

On the day after the full moon during the month of Phalunga, which falls in March or April.

Or on the day after the full moon during the month of Phalunga, which falls in April or May.

Can you remember which months Phalunga falls in? And when Hindus will be looking for that full moon, which months would they be looking in? Choose your answer now.

You might even want to write it down.

If you want to, that would be amazing work, then writing it down will actually lock it in your head even better, you'll remember it more precious writing it down as you pause the video and write it down if you want to now.

Let's see if you were right.

Well done if you said that the month of Phalunga falls in February or March.

Our months of February or March, that's when the month of Phalunga is and that's when Hindus will be looking for the full moon so they can get ready to celebrate Holi.

Now in the UK, you may also see Holi being celebrated.

It's being celebrated more and more commonly.

You might see people covered in that powdered paint.

Hindus, living in the UK, celebrating that by having lots and lots of fun, throwing coloured water, throwing coloured paints.

However, there are some other festivals in the UK, which are inspired by Holi, which are becoming more common and more common by people that aren't Hindus and don't really know about the Hindu faith.

And one of these is for example, something called The Coloured Run, which you might have seen when people go on a run, it's like a fun run, but as they're running, they'll have powdered paint and they'll throw to each other and that's what this picture is of here, showing The Coloured Run and all sorts of different people, throwing that powdered paint and having lots and lots of fun.

And lots of people say this isn't appropriate.

This is what might sometimes be called cultural appropriation.

Where one culture, one group of people, take somebody else's culture, they take that away and they enjoy some parts of it, but not other parts of it.

And there's different types of cultural appropriation.

And some people see The Coloured Run as cultural appropriation of Holi.

They say you're forgetting all of the important culture, you probably don't even know the story of Prahalad and Holika.

You, there's no religious significance there for you.

So you shouldn't really be celebrating it, it's not really appropriate for you to take that.

If you want to, if you want to celebrate it, then you need to learn all about it otherwise it's quite insulting to our culture to say the culture isn't really important we just want to throw the powdered paint.

There are other people on the other hand who argue, well, look, there's lots of people who might have heritage from India and they're now growing up and living in the UK, and they want to be able to celebrate this festival.

It's important to them and their heritage and their culture and the more people celebrating it the better.

If they don't understand it completely, that's not a huge problem.

It's better just that everybody takes part in it, in the same way that some people that aren't Christians might still enjoy getting in the Christmas spirit, doesn't matter that they don't really understand the religious significance, or that that's not important to them.

It's just nice for everybody to do something together.

So there are two sides to this sort of argument, some people saying it's cultural appropriation, and some people saying you know that's fine, this is really appropriate.

So what, so let's ask a question.

Let's first of all, let's just write out a little question about that.

Why do some people say Holi should not be celebrated here in the UK, through events like 'The Coloured Run', Colour Run sorry.

And you might like to use that sentence starter there.

Some people believe that Holi shouldn't be celebrated through events, such as 'The Colour Run', because.

And so make sure that you get, perhaps both sides of that argument and that you set out some of the debates that are currently happening to do with Holi and 'The Colour Run'.

So pause your video and see if you can answer that question now please.

Awesome work.

I'm going to show you my answer now and let's see if you've got something similar.

So I wrote, some people believe that Holi shouldn't be celebrated through events such as 'The Colour Run' because they believe it is insulting to celebrate it where the event pays no attention to Holi beyond the beautiful colours.

It's just taking the parts that they like and leaving out the other parts.

Now you might have also given a balanced argument there and spoken a little bit about some of the counter arguments and how some people think that it is appropriate, and it allows people even outside of India to celebrate this religious and cultural festival in new and different ways and be inclusive of lots of people into that celebration.

I wonder what you think, which argument are you persuaded by? Do you think, I don't think this is really appropriate.

Or do you think, I think that this is an okay thing.

We're really interested in your ideas.

And just as you could share those ideas, you could write them down and share them by asking your parents or carers to take a photo of your work and pop it onto social media.

You can even do like a video where you could explain what you think, you could ask your parents to, or carers to do a video of you, of you sort of explaining this debate and what your thoughts are.

And those could be posted to Twitter or Facebook or Instagram.

Just make sure you include the hashtag #LearnwithOak because I would love to read them or see what you reason and what you think.

Well done for working so hard today.

Awesome, awesome work.

There's a quiz as always.

So please don't forget to complete that.

And I'll see you in our next lesson, where we're actually to take everything that we've learnt together and see if we can write an essay.

So we'll be planning it in our next lesson.

So get ready, you might want to, what you might want to do between now and then is start to reread some of your notes.

Get, if you're using an exercise book, start to flick through and reread some of those ideas.

So they're nice and fresh in your mind, and you're ready to bring them all together and write about all of them, in a nice long essay and that'll be an awesome thing to have, and you'll feel really proud of yourself once you've got it.

Thanks and I'll see you in our next lesson.