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Subject:  Re: Holi fun or punishment [long] |
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Author:  Lucas |
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Date Posted: 18:23:15 03/16/26 Mon In reply to: Graeme 's message, "Holi fun or punishment" on 10:39:35 03/16/26 Mon Hey Graeme, thank you for linking this, it's really interesting. Some things that stood out to me: 1. the "one whip" looks, and especially sounds, like a really heavy one. It's not just a playful swat! 2. The little kid looks genuinely scared. He doesn't seem to be laughing either before, during or after he gets whipped, even tho everyone else is. 3. The way all three people move off in different directions implies that these three people (or some of them) might not be related and might be complete strangers to each other. So it may genuinely be an instance of a boy on the street being grabbed and restrained by one adult he doesn't know, and then whipped by another. Which in some ways is much more interesting (and intense) than things like "birthday spankings" within families or between friends, like we're used to. I've done a few searches and been through the comments on the video to try to find out more. Incidentally, for those on Microsoft Windows, you seem to get a larger version of the video, and can view "hidden" comments, if you're signed into an Instagram account. Holi is most famous for the practice of throwing food-based coloured dyes at people. This is a celebration where the target is not required to consent to being involved - which means complete strangers can soak people they don't know without any warning whatsoever. This lack of consent can seem unreasonable to Western people. It supports the possibility that this whipping is also a stranger-on-stranger spontaneous incident, and that the boy hasn't agreed to it in advance and might not even know the man holding him or the woman whipping him. Some towns in the southern USA have a similar tradition as part of the Mardi Gras festival. Basically older teens and young men will chase any younger teens or tweens they find out on the streets, and any that are caught, are forced to their knees and then whipped on their bottoms, probably with branches or switches. This is a type of "partly optional" stranger-on-stranger spanking, because the kids being chased do see it as a fun game (unless they get caught!) - if they didn't want to participate, they could just stay home that evening. The reason I think this video might be that type of incident (a stranger spanking a stranger, and definitely not a punishment for anything) is that one of the comments in Hindi translates to "he was caught and killed, otherwise what stories are there?" Which seems to mean that getting caught means you get a whipping, and that's how the tradition works. Basically the idea that if he didn't want a spanking, he shouldn't have let himself get caught. (Reminds me of the judge's comment in the Barry Travers case on corpun.com - "If you get a beating you must expect it to be with force.") Some of the Krampus traditions in Europe also have a similar procedure, where young men dressed up as Krampus catch and whip tween and younger teen boys. This seems to have been a development of the earlier Krampus "monster" stories used to scare small children into behaving. Chasing and being chased seems to be something that all kids do naturally. The addition of being caught ending in a spanking is less common, but many kids from age 11 to 14 or so do seem to find the sense of danger in this "fun" or amusing. They genuinely enjoy the adrenaline rush of possible consequences if caught. Not related to any religious festival or mythological figure, younger boys at my school do often taunt older boys and then run and expect to be chased, with a beating the consequence if they're caught. (Happens especially on Friday 13th.) Of course officially the older boys shouldn't be beating them, but if the younger boys didn't want the risk of a beating, they wouldn't be challenging them to chase them in the first place. (Another parallel is that the some of the locker rooms at my school still have communal showers, and it's not unusual for older boys to whip at younger boy's bare bottoms with water-soaked towels.) Despite the little kid in the video definitely not looking happy about being caught and apparently not finding it funny either. There is one other interesting detail. At first he has one arm lifted to try to protect his bottom. But then, just as the woman is about to whip him, he lowers it so that she has a clear shot. It seems almost that he knows he's due a spanking because he got caught, so he accepts his fate. The Instagram video also has a comment that reflects old attitudes about some similar situations in Western countries - that the adults spanking the kid is fair or reasonable because they would've got similar spankings themselves when they were kids. The comment in Hindi translates to "after 10 or 12 years, his time will also come". i.e. once he's grown up, this kid will be giving spankings to the next generation of kids. I suspect there's also an attitude that, rather than this spanking being a punishment for something specific that the kid in the video has done, the view is that "all little kids are brats" and therefore if you catch one you should make sure they get a spanking. Another thing to note is that the twisted coiled clothing that the woman is using as a whip, is already soaked in water to increase the sting. It's also likely that the boy's shorts are already wet through already. There's a lot of water around as part of the celebration. It seems like both the man and the woman are agreed that only one spank is needed - the man releases the boy as soon as it's done. So it's not really a proper spanking or a beating like some of the Mardi Gras related whippings might be. It's mostly symbolic even tho it seems to have been hard enough that it would really sting. The kid does dart away from both of them, tho, as if he's not really sure that they're not planning to give him some more whacks. A Hindi-language news site explains "Kodamar Holi is an age-old tradition of the royal family of Kota. In this Holi, women and men are whipped with clothes and wet with water and colors. In the royal family, on the day of Dhulandi, all the guests gather to play Holi. Here women give men [use on men?] a whip made of cloth. Men throw water at the surviving[?] women. The special thing is that there is no malice of any kind in the mind about this, but with the beating, the intoxication of Holi and the head rises. Old historians say that earlier [in old times] the color of Kodamar Holi [i.e. this type of celebration] was scattered [took place] in many areas of the city. On the one hand, women lash and on the other hand, men pour water from dolachis and pour a different joy of Holi. People prepare for it a day or two in advance." The suggestion seems to be that giving, receiving or watching a spanking contributes to a good or celebratory state of mind. This is similar to some practices in Scandinavia and eastern Europe. And it seems that the idea of spanking "men" as a celebration, has translated really easily into spanking boys. Another news site suggests that in Haryana, the whipping during Holi is between people who are related to each other: "when brother-in-law throws color on sister-in-law, sister-in-law uses whip to drive him away to protect herself. This whip is made of cloth which does not cause much injury and the sister-in-law also gets angry at the brother-in-law. People who see this Korda Holi for the first time, may think that sister-in-law is beating her brother-in-law. But they will understand its significance only when they look at the tradition behind it." It also mentions the brothers-in-law arming themselves with big sticks to fight back against the women that are whipping them. Again, it doesn't look to me like the kid in the video is related to the people spanking him. Plus, he doesn't appear to be throwing any coloured dye himself, so there is no give-and-take retaliation as seems to be implied in this description of whippings between in-laws. The transformation of a relatively harmless dye-throwing festival, into a chasing-and-spanking event involving water-soaked whips and big sticks, is definitely interesting. I found another news article about Dungarpur, Rajasthan, where they take it even further and the Holi celebrations involve pelting each other with stones - hard. The news article said in one celebration, 42 people were injured in just one day. There are also concerns about Holi sometimes being used as an excuse to harass women. But boys getting spankings doesn't really count as harassment I guess :) [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| Subject | Author | Date |
| Re: Holi fun or punishment [long] | Graeme to Lucas | 00:13:27 03/17/26 Tue |
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