WHERE COLOUR MEETS COURAGE - Widows' Holi - Vrindavan
WHERE COLOUR MEETS COURAGE
Witnessing Widows' Holi at
Radha Gopinath Temple, Vrindavan
Photography & Words by Mandeep Singh
Vrindavan,
Uttar Pradesh, India · 2 March 2026
📷 msbphotos.in | @photography.msb
A widow rests in the temple
courtyard before the celebrations begin — her folded hands and weathered gaze
carry decades of quiet devotion.
How the Journey Began — Delhi to
Vrindavan with PhotoCommune
I have been part of
PhotoCommune for five years now — a photography collective that has
consistently pushed me to go beyond comfortable frames and familiar subjects.
When two of its founders, Idris and Antasa, announced a one-day trip from Delhi
to Vrindavan on 2nd March 2026, I did not need much convincing. The event was
organized in collaboration with Future Forward, a Delhi-based photography store
that has long championed documentary and street photography in India. The plan
was simple: leave early, reach Vrindavan before the celebrations at Radha
Gopinath Temple began, and document Widows' Holi.
What made this trip special
was not just the destination but the people making the journey. A group of
photographers, each with their own eye and intention, descending on the same
narrow lanes of Vrindavan with cameras and a shared curiosity. Idris and Antasa
have an instinct for choosing moments that matter — events where photography is
not just documentation but a form of witness. This was exactly that kind of
morning.
Trip Organized By:
PhotoCommune (Instagram): https://www.instagram.com/photocommune/
Future Forward Photography Store: https://futureforward.in/en/
A Morning Unlike Any Other
I arrived at the Radha
Gopinath Temple before 10 in the morning, camera in hand and absolutely no idea
of what was about to hit me. The lanes of Vrindavan were already beginning to
hum with movement — sadhus, street vendors, devotees, and in the midst of it
all, streams of women in white making their way toward the temple. What greeted
me inside was chaotic and overwhelming in the most breathtaking way possible.
The courtyard of the
ancient Gopinath Temple had been transformed overnight. Across a white cloth on
the floor, someone had arranged dozens of trays and mounds of color: brilliant
yellows of marigold, deep crimson gulal, electric magenta, chalky turmeric,
dried rose petals in burgundy. It looked less like a festival setup and more
like a painting that had not yet decided what to become.
Mounds of marigold petals,
turmeric and vibrant gulal laid across the temple floor — a carpet of color
awaiting the celebration.
The Gopinath Temple
courtyard fills with women as Sulabh International's Holi Mahotsav banners
frame the scene.
Bowls of red, magenta,
yellow and blue gulal alongside dried rose petals — the palette of liberation,
arranged by hand.
The Story Behind the Colors — What
is Widows' Holi?
For centuries, widowhood in
India — particularly in places like Vrindavan — meant a life stripped of almost
everything. Widows were expected to wear white, withdraw from all celebrations,
and live in silence at the margins of society. Many were abandoned by their
families and came to Vrindavan to spend their remaining years near the sacred
temples of Lord Krishna, surviving on ashram charity. At its peak, nearly 6,000
widows — mostly from Bengal — lived in this small temple town in acute poverty.
Holi, the festival of color and joy, was completely forbidden to them.
That began to change in
2012, when the Supreme Court of India directed social organization Sulabh
International to improve the living conditions of Vrindavan's widows. In 2013,
Sulabh organized the first public Holi celebration for widows inside Gopinath
Temple — a radical, symbolic act. Approximately 800 women smeared colors on
each other for the first time in years, some for the first time in decades.
Many wept. That single event broke a tradition that had endured for over four
centuries.
The celebration has grown
every year since. Today it draws widows from five ashrams, photographers,
journalists, and visitors from across the world. More than a tons of flowers
and 700 kilograms of gulal now mark the occasion. What began as a quiet act of
inclusion has become a powerful symbol of social reform — proof that festivals
can be instruments of change, and that joy is a right, not a privilege.
When the Color Took Over
The moment the celebration
truly began, I felt it before I saw it. A deep roar from the crowd, a surge of
movement, and then — a wall of magenta. Someone had thrown a fistful of gulal
into the air and the entire courtyard seemed to ignite. Within seconds, the
white sarees disappeared. The women who had arrived in careful, measured
dignity were now dancing, laughing, throwing color with both hands.
A burst of deep magenta
fills the air as widows and visitors throw colors in unison — a moment of pure,
uncontainable joy.
What struck me most, beyond
the visual explosion, was the sound. There was singing — devotional rasiya
songs dedicated to Krishna — intercut with laughter, the soft percussion of
drums, and the constant whisper of color powder landing on cloth, on skin, on
the ancient stone floor. At one point, I lowered my camera and just stood in
it. This was not performance. This was something that had been held back for a
long time, finally finding its release.
Faces I Will Not Forget
I gravitate toward
portraits in my photography — I want to find the story inside the face. At
Gopinath Temple that morning, every face was a world. These were women who had
lived through loss — of husbands, of family, of belonging — and yet here they
were, painted in every color the morning could offer, and they were
magnificent.
Her face dusted with orange
and pink, a widow looks directly into the lens — a lifetime of resilience in a
single unflinching gaze.
Covered in magenta, her
wide smile and rudraksha mala tell a story far more powerful than words ever
could.
Calm, steady eyes peer
through layers of red and pink — a quiet portrait of grace and inner strength.
There was an older woman
whose face was covered almost entirely in orange gulal — so thick it had caked
into the lines of her forehead. She sat with eyes closed, one hand raised,
chanting softly. When she opened her eyes and looked straight at me, it was not
with suspicion but with something more like acknowledgement. She had seen
things I could not imagine. She was here anyway.
Arms raised, face tilted
upward, she sings with abandon — her entire being surrendered to the music and
the moment.
An elderly widow in pale
white — now streaked with colour — gestures animatedly, her spirit refusing to
be diminished.
Dancing Without Permission
The dancing started slowly
and then all at once. One woman would begin to sway, arms lifting, and within
moments others around her would follow. There was no choreography, no stage. I
found myself chasing light and movement, trying to hold onto moments that were
lasting only a second before dissolving back into the crowd.
Arms spread wide, expression electric — a woman dances as if the colour itself is setting her free.
Lost in dance, both hands
extended, the world behind her a blur of pink and blue — a frame frozen in
liberation.
One woman stopped me cold.
She was dancing with both arms spread wide, drenched in pink, eyes half-closed
— nothing self-conscious about her. She was not dancing for the cameras or the
crowd. She was dancing for herself. For the years she had not been allowed to.
I pressed the shutter knowing no photograph could fully hold what was happening
in that movement.
A Sea of Colors
As the celebration reached
its peak, the courtyard became almost impossible to navigate. Every inch of
space was taken — widows, priests, photographers, young men, visitors from
across India and abroad — all of us covered in the same indiscriminate colour.
In those minutes, there were no hierarchies. The Sulabh Holi Mahotsav banner
overhead reminded you that this was an organized act of social change — but the
joy inside it was entirely, uncontrollably real.
Two widows sit quietly near
the temple gate — one watching, one in prayer — stillness within the
surrounding storm of colour.
Joy Does Not Discriminate
While the widows were the
heart of this morning, the men I photographed were a reminder that Holi belongs
to everyone. Their energy was different — louder, more boisterous — but no less
genuine. Many of the young men were locals who had grown up celebrating Holi in
these lanes every year. For them, Gopinath Temple was both tradition and
tribute.
People beam with contagious joy — their faces painted in every colour of the rainbow.
Colour Offered to Krishna
A devotee carries an adorned idol of Lord Krishna, his own face gleaming with magenta — faith and festivity inseparably intertwined. and A playful local man strikes a pose, his kurta soaked in pink and blue — the spirit of Holi alive in every gesture.
At the spiritual centre of
everything was Lord Krishna — this is, after all, the land where Krishna is
said to have played Holi with Radha and the gopis. One of the most striking
images I made was of a man carrying an ornate idol of Krishna on a silver tray,
his own face so saturated with magenta that deity and devotee had merged
entirely in colour. He was laughing. The idol seemed to be, too.
Two colour-soaked men emerge from the temple archway — turbans wrapped tight, carrying the satisfied exhaustion of a morning well celebrated.
Before the Storm
Some of my favorite frames from that morning were the moments just before the chaos — women sitting together in white, hands folded or raised in prayer, waiting for something to begin. The anticipation in those faces holds as much meaning as any peak moment of celebration. They knew what was about to happen. They had been waiting for it, some of them, for decades.
I left the Gopinath Temple
that morning with a camera full of images and colour on my shoes, my bag, and
somewhere on my left elbow that I could not explain. But I also left with
something harder to name — a reframing of what a festival actually is. Not just
spectacle or tradition or religion, but an act of inclusion. A declaration
that certain people are allowed to exist joyfully, publicly, loudly, in colour.
The widows of Vrindavan
were excluded from that for centuries. And then, in 2013, someone decided they
should not be. And now here we are, every year, a little louder than before.
Trips like this one —
arranged by people like Idris and Antasa, supported by a community like
Photocommune, made possible by spaces like Future Forward — are a reminder that
photography is always better when it is pursued together, with intention and
curiosity and the willingness to wake up early and get on a road to Vrindavan.
Holi is not only about
colours. It is about who gets to throw them.
Credits & Links
Photographer
Mandeep Singh
Website: https://msbphotos.in/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/photography.msb/
Trip Organised by Photocommune
Curated by Idris https://www.instagram.com/idrisphotography/
& Antasa https://www.instagram.com/travelling_stree/
— a Delhi-based photography
collective creating meaningful photographic experiences across India for over the
decade.
Photocommune Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/photocommune/
Supported by Future Forward
Photography Store
Future Forward is a premier
photography store in Delhi championing documentary, street, and fine-art
photography in India.
Future Forward Website: https://futureforward.in/en/
All
photographs © Mandeep Singh 2026. All rights reserved.
Reproduction
or use of any image without written permission is strictly prohibited.
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