NEW YORK (RNS) — At the 37th annual Phagwah parade in early March in Richmond Hill, Queens, spectators danced to tassa drums, tossed brightly colored powders over the crowd and smeared each other’s faces with paint, all traditional ways to celebrate the Hindu spring festival known in Indian diaspora communities as Holi but called Phagwah by Hindus in the Caribbean.
But among the revelers and passing floats displaying names and logos of local businesses and Hindu temples marched a contingent of about 150 people demonstrating their Phagwah pride by less traditional means, waving LGBTQ pride flags and signs reading “Love is Equity” and “No Hate, No Fear, Immigrants Are Welcome Here.”
The group represented Phagwah Social Justice Collective, a coalition of civil rights and progressive Hindu organizations with missions to aid Indo-Caribbean women, immigrants and LGBTQ people in South Queens. Founded in 2019 by Mohamed Q. Amin, executive director of the 10-year-old Caribbean Equality Project, which advocates for the rights of Caribbean immigrants and LGBTQ people in New York, the coalition has become a fixture of the parade, the largest Phagwah celebration in the U.S.
Amin’s CEP had made history in 2016 by becoming the first group to wave the …