NEW DELHI, 27 March 2005 — India shut down yesterday to celebrate its boisterous festival of colors, Holi, but thousands chose to splash around in naturally colored pastes and powders instead of risky synthetic products.
Millions of revelers dabbed themselves in colors, tossed around colored powder and sprayed colored water at each other in towns and cities during the day-long festival that heralds the end of winter.
But every year scores of people report to hospitals with eye and skin injuries from synthetic products that are often laced with ground glass, lead and acidic chemicals, according to the National Society for Prevention of Blindness in India.
Experts say some chemical-based colors have the potential to damage skin, the nervous system and the kidneys and can even stunt the physical and mental growth of children.
In a bid to cut the risks, the government urged revelers to return to traditional vegetable-based dyes.
“Choose colors from nature, enjoy a safe and natural Holi,” said an advertisement put out by the Department of Environment in leading newspapers. Another government ad warned chemicals could cause permanent skin damage.
The public seems to be taking heed.
“The synthetic colors were never meant for applying to the human body. There is a huge response to herbal colors as people are realiszing this,” Vandana Shiva, whose organization Navdanya promotes natural foods and dyes, told AFP.
Five years ago her organization started to promote the use of gulal, a traditional Indian color made from natural extracts, to fight the flood of synthetic powders that industrial enterprises have put into the market.
“The demand is now so huge that every Holi we have to stop making all other products and only make natural colors. At least 10 new businesses making natural colors have come up in Delhi but it is not enough to meet the demand,” Shiva said.
The ancient festival was originally deeply rooted in nature as it expressed the hope for good harvests and fertility of the land during spring.
But, “India lost touch with its natural past and turned into a toxic waste dump in the last 20 to 30 years,” Shiva said.
“The industry sold the synthetics by using the appeal of brighter colors, making the safe and natural colors look like backward products,” she said.
The synthetic colors quickly became popular in big cities, rather than rural areas where the colors are still made in homes from vegetable pastes.
But even the city dwellers are rediscovering that although the natural powders are not “as flashy”, they look and feel beautiful, Shiva said.
The government campaign, which encourages people to discard synthetic colors in favor of extracts from rose petals, beetroot and turmeric, had results, said Prem Agarwal, former honorary secretary-general of the Indian Medical Association.
“Thanks to the use of natural and better colors, the number of skin and eye injury cases have started dropping,” he said.
