Hola Mohalla

Hola Mohalla is a Sikh festival of martial skill, discipline and community, established by Guru Gobind Singh around the turn of the eighteenth century at Anandpur Sahib. Coming immediately after Holi, it redirected festive energy toward organised demonstrations of readiness, horsemanship, weapons practice and collective courage. Traditional Nihang groups remain especially visible in displays of gatka, riding and other martial arts, while the gathering also includes kirtan, poetry, religious discourse and vast community kitchens. The martial character is not separate from spiritual life: Sikh teaching links strength with responsibility to protect others and resist injustice rather than dominate the weak. At Anandpur Sahib the event draws large congregations and processions. Hola Mohalla thus brings together saintly devotion and soldierly discipline, celebrating physical skill, fearlessness, service and solidarity within the community.

Hola Mohalla is significant to the community that observes it and helps preserve religious, family and cultural continuity.

Three days at Anandpur Sahib, with the Nihangs riding, gatka, tent-pegging and poetry, ending in a procession behind the Granth. Langar runs the whole time. Colour is played too, but it is not what the day is for.

Anandpur Sahib in Punjab, for three days, where it is a fair of hundreds of thousands. Kept much more quietly at other gurdwaras, and not at all in most of the diaspora, where Vaisakhi carries the processional role instead.