The Hola Fair, popularly known as Hola Mohalla, is a unique event held every year at Anandpur Sahib on the day following the Holi Festival. Thousands of devotees from various parts of the country throng to Anandpur Sahib to participate in the fair which lasts for three days. The Gurudwaras are specially decorated for the occasion. During Hola Mohalla Anandpur Sahib wears a festive appearance and hums with activities in the month of March every year. Community conferences and religious functions are also organized.
Guru Gobind Singh rechristened the Holi festival by the end of the 17th century as Hola Mohalla, to use the opportunity to train his forces in the art of warfare. Near the fort of Holgarh in Anandpur Sahib, his headquarters, the Nihangs, as the Sikh warriors were called, divided into two groups and engaged in mock battle.
The military exercise, which was personally supervised by the guru, was carried out on the bed of the River Charan Ganga with the famous Hindu temple of Mata Naina Devi in the Shivaliks as the backdrop.
Faced with the might of the Mughal empire, the guru felt the need to create a typical martial vocabulary, differentiating it from the local dialect, to ensure the permanence of chardikala (high spirits) among his men.
Several words that were then considered weak were tampered with to give them a male gender and make them sound more militant. Thus, Holi became Hola. Similarly, the katar (cutlass) became katara, teg (sword) changed to tega, and barchhi (lance) to barchha. Certain other words were also changed to deceive the enemy spies -- chane (grams) began to be called badaam (almonds) and roti (bread) became pershad.
Though the festival itself is a three-day affair, the movement of devotees carries on for a full week, and hundreds of families come in trucks from as far as Calcutta and Patna in the East, Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh, and Nanded in Maharashtra.
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