Politics of Petals: When A Secular Festival Becomes Inconvenient

With transitioning seasons, as the leaves wither away, Mehrauli, the earliest part of Dehli, would bloom with marigolds and music. By early October, the lanes of Mehrauli would be dressed as a bride as the Phool Walon Ki Sair made its way from Yogmaya Temple to the Dargah of Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki. As garlands hung over the heads of the temple and a Chadar made up of flowers was laid over, a customary walk to the Dargah was undertaken. This procession wove together the city’s fragile spirit of coexistence in communal harmony, carrying floral pankhas across faiths with the same reverence, featuring both the Devi and the Kabah side by side.

This year, 2025, for the first time in decades, the procession didn’t happen. The lanes stayed silent—no music, no garlands, no pankhas—just bare lanes of first Dehli.

An annual event once initiated by the Mughals, revived in 1962, and organised today by the Anjuman Sair-e-Gul Faroshan team, Phool Walon Ki Sair has long been more than a festival. It is a centuries-old celebration of the city’s blended religious harmony—a harmony packed with mystical scents of culture. Fariduddin Nizami, the caretaker of the dargah of Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki and the key member of Anjuman Sair-e-Gul Faroshan, laments, "We adorned Mehrauli like a bride...".

It is Delhi reenacting its own memory—Hindu and Muslim communities walking side by side, musicians playing dhols, the air filled with the scents of jasmine, rose, and rajnigandha. It is a living reminder that the city’s oldest harmony was once expressed not through sermons, but through flowers. “One side of the Pankha is Devi, the other side Kabah,” says Usha Dayal Kumar, Advocate and the leading organiser of Phool Walon Ki Sair. “This year, the process just… stalled. There was no outright denial. But without a written approval, nothing could move,” she says.

On asking the organising team, Anjuman Sair-e-Gul Faroshan society said that after corresponding with the Delhi Development Authority (DDA)—which manages the park—for several months without receiving full approval, they had no alternative but to postpone. The documentation suggests, “It is unanimously decided to postpone the organisation of Phool Waalon Ki Sair for this year to March 2026, due to the fact that requisite permission for using Aam Bagh has not been granted by DDA so far, coupled with the fact that the level of pollution has become critical in Delhi.”

Officials called it a “logistical pause” —as if the silence of a centuries-old tradition could be reduced to paperwork. But in Mehrauli, where the festival has always felt like an annual homecoming, that explanation sounded thin. Once a state-backed celebration of Delhi’s unconsecrated-holy landscape—a temple and a dargah bound by a shared offering—Phool Walon Ki Sair now lies quietly in the archives of forgotten harmony.

"It's a festival in its own right," says Gopal Sharma, the priest of the Yogmaya temple. He emphasises that the temple's vibrancy relies on the festival. As the event approaches, more people fill the narrow alleys surrounding the Yogmaya temple, bringing life and energy. However, when the festival concludes, the lanes become quiet, echoing only with the sound of the temple bells.

“When the procession happens, we send our Muslim brother to lead the prayers in the temple, and when we go to Dargah, they ask us to lead their prayers,” Sharma continues. For the organisers, this exchange of faith is the core of the festival, evidence that the Sair is not merely symbolic, but practised through real participation across faith lines. In these simple exchanges of allegiance lies the inheritance of a city that once refused to separate its sacred spaces. However, today, the same coexistence is questioned with deepening religious polarity, political infestations, and fractures that quietly alter neighbourhood relationships.

At the office of the organising committee, old files sit piled in corners, their edges frayed from decades of permissions, budgets, and letters exchanged with governments long gone. “We applied on time,” says Dayal Kumar, who has been part of the Sair for more than twenty years. “Every year, the process is the same. But this year, the silence from departments was unusual. No clear ‘yes,’ no clear ‘no’. Just… nothing,” she continues.

On the day the festival should have begun, flower vendors waited outside the Yogmaya Temple, their baskets full, their earnings uncertain. “Har saal is time bheed hoti thi,” says a florist outside the mandir, stringing marigolds into a garland that no procession would ever carry. “This festival was not just about religion. It was about Dehli.” Her stall, once lit with anticipation, now sits dimmed by loss.

At the dargah of Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, Fariduddin, the caretaker runs his fingers along the steps leading inside. “For us, the Sair meant respect,” he says quietly. “When the pankha arrived from the temple, it felt like the city was bowing to peace. This year, that bow never came.”

As the festival recedes into memory, its absence exposes a deeper discomfort; not with flowers or ceremonies, but with symbols of shared faith. Over the past few years, organisers say the climate has subtly shifted. Permissions take longer. Enthusiasm from authorities frays. “When a festival goes from being encouraged to being tolerated, you can feel the change,” the organiser adds. “This, too, is politics.”

At this point, the growing polarity has made religious lines more rigid, turning earlier indifferences into marked differences. “Now even in the Aam Bagh, only two mango trees are left,” Usha says, noting that people seem to be moving away from shared cultural practices and viewing religion as separate rather than collective. Aam Bagh, the mango grove, has traditional significance in the Sair and has been marked as a common ground where the floral pankhas (fans) were prepared, where communities gathered, and where the festival’s performers, florists, and visitors assembled before the procession moved toward Yogmaya Temple and then to the dargah of Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki.

Fariuddin expresses his disappointment, saying, “In the past, Phool Walon Ki Sair was a festival that truly celebrated our community. The representatives from the government used to honour the occasion, spending the entire day and night with us, helping to arrange everything. Now, it feels as though this cherished festival has been pushed aside. It’s no longer the same, with only local MLAs and the governor inaugurating it, whereas before, we would enjoy dinner and lunches together with our representatives. It’s a change that many of us find hard to accept.”

The silence around Phool Walon Ki Sair sits uneasily in a city built on layers of syncretism—Sufi shrines beside ancient temples, Mughal domes rising behind modern skylines, a language born of mixed worlds. The festival carried all of this history in its journey from one sacred space to another. To see it paused, indefinitely, is to see Delhi lose a small but essential part of its soul.

A festival once patronised and rejoiced by generations of Delhiites has fallen victim to bureaucratic neglect and political discomfort with symbols of coexistence. Phool Walon Ki Sair was never just about a procession; it was a lived metaphor, a celebration of Delhi's layered identity, where devotion flowed freely across shrines and temples, with boundaries softened under the weight of shared rituals. The very “logistical pause” signals more than an administrative setback—it suggests a deeper crack in cultural balances, which are struggling against the pressures of polarised times. The annual Phool Walon Ki Sair, whose central theme, Phool, stands for the syncretic nature of the two religions praying together, is the celebration of brotherhood. Today, the same festivity is being questioned and seen as a hindrance by the local neighbourhood and is struggling to get approval.

The date proposed for the Phool Walo Ki Sair event is suggested to be in February or March by the Anjuman Sair-e-Gul Faroshan. However, it is important to note that on reaching out, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) did not respond to multiple calls/messages and has not yet provided any official confirmation regarding this matter.

When logistical barriers overshadow a tradition built on coexistence and religious harmony, it raises an unsettling question: even if the flowers cannot flow freely between faiths, what do the priests of the city offer?