A Political Tug-of-War Charts The Uncertain Future of Phool Walon Ki Sair This Year

On November 9, Lieutenant Governor V.K. Saxena intervened to grant permission for Delhi's centuries-old Phool Walon Ki Sair after the Delhi Development Authority withheld approval, citing a November 2023 directive from the then-AAP government's Forest Department, which caused uproar across social media and cultural circles. 

The festival, now postponed to February-March 2026, became the latest casualty in Delhi's deepening administrative upheaval: a ping-pong game between agencies that has left organisers, vendors, and an entire cultural ecosystem in limbo.

For Usha Kumar, general secretary of Anjuman Sair-e-Gul Faroshan, the ordeal began in April when she first applied for permission. The organisers started to apply for permission early this year. A member of the non-profit that has been hosting the festival since 1961 told us, "First they denied, now they agreed. Now this game? We will await a proper written order this time, no more believing in mere words," referring to the months-long hardship the organisation had to deal with before getting rejected. 

The DDA blamed the AAP government's 2023 environmental order; the AAP accused the BJP-led central government of stifling Delhi's Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb. Meanwhile, the festival hung in the balance—not because of any real threat, but because no one wanted to sign the paper first.

From Royal Vow to Contemporary Struggle

The story begins in 1812, when Mughal prince Mirza Jahangir—son of Emperor Akbar Shah II—was exiled to Allahabad after firing a gun at British Resident Mr Seton from the Red Fort's Nakharkhana. His mother, Mumtaz Mahal Begum, made a vow: if her son returned safely, she would offer a chadar to the shrine of Khwaja Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki and a pankha (decorative fan) to the Yogmaya temple.

Mirza Jahangir was freed but died before ascending the throne. His brother, Bahadur Shah Zafar, became emperor and continued the festival as a celebration of Delhi itself. The pankha he commissioned bore images of Medina on one side and Yogmaya Mata on the other—a physical embodiment of Delhi's syncretic soul.

"There is a very interesting incident from one of the last Phool Walon Ki Sair in the lifetime of Bahadur Shah Zafar," recounts historianUmair Khan, known on Instagram as Sikkawala. "When people asked Bahadur Shah Zafar to go to the dargah, he said that he could not go there because he had not been to Yogmaya temple. 'My children'—basically referring to the subjects of Delhi—' are both Hindus and Muslims. So I'll prefer not to go either to a dargah or to a mandir and send my children there to show the unity between people of Delhi and the rulers."

The festival was a three-day extravaganza. Processions would leave Shahjahanabad after the month of Sawan, halting at Jharna with elaborate feasts. There were swimming competitions in the Yamuna behind the Red Fort, kite-flying battles between the Red Fort and Humayun's Tomb three miles away. Ceremonial battalions led decorated horse-drawn carriages called Shakramas, followed by bangle sellers, henna artists, and flower vendors. Old Delhi would empty out as everyone migrated to Mehrauli.

In 1942, the British banned the festival at the height of the Quit India Movement—anything promoting unity was dangerous. Then came 1947, and Mehrauli witnessed some of Delhi's worst communal violence. Mahatma Gandhi's last speech was at Bakhtiar Kaki's dargah, pleading with people to stop spreading communal violence. "This dargah has been a victim of the anger of the mob. The Muslims who have been living nearby for the last 800 years had to leave it… Though the Muslims love this dargah, today no Muslim is found around it… It is the duty of the Hindus, Sikhs, the authorities and the government to reopen this dargah and wash away this stain on all of us," as mentioned in his collected works from his speech on 27 January 1948.

Jawaharlal Nehru revived the festival in 1962 as a symbol of national unity. The DDA later took over the organisation, and eventually the Anjuman Sair-e-Gul Faroshan committee became its primary custodian.

Yet syncretism itself has frayed. Khan told us about this in passing as he talked to us over a call, but we witnessed this first-hand when we saw the old pankhas at the Yogmaya Temple. Glistening with vermillion paste was the photo of Goddess Yogmaya, but the picture of Mecca and Medina was removed, even from the fan gifted by the President of India, Droupadi Murmu.

Khan’s words thus carry a deeper resignation: "We have already lost the fragment of cultural syncretism in this country. Whether the festival happens or not, those who have syncretism in them, who have brotherhood in them, will keep the culture of unity. Those who don't, won't change because of a festival."

The Economic Domino Effect

Walk through Chattarpur phool mandi on any October morning, and you'd typically find wholesalers preparing for the Sair's surge. Not this year till yesterday. "We'd already ordered extra marigolds, roses, and chameli," says Rajesh Malhotra, a second-generation flower trader, whom we first met at the mandi and then informed over the phone about the approval and postponement of the festival. "When the news broke about the cancellation, I had to sell at a 40% loss cause it was a humongous perishable stock. Now they're saying February-March? The uncertainty is worse than any ban. You can't plan inventory, you can't commit to suppliers. This ping-pong is killing small businesses."

Mohammad Salim runs a kebab stall on the route that the Sair takes and thus relies heavily on the Sair week. He lamented heavily about the cancellation, stating that the crowd all around Mehrauli would help sustain him for 2-3 months. When we told him over a call about the approval now, he was shocked, but not excited. "During COVID, at least we knew nothing was happening. Now we are in limbo; prepare, don't prepare, wait, maybe, possibly. I have lost other catering contracts because I'd blocked that time. The excitement is gone. It's become another government deadline to stress over."

What We Lose When Culture Becomes Collateral

The deeper wound isn't economic—it's existential. Ghalib once wrote that Delhi's existence depends on its "lively scenes," listing Phool Walon Ki Sair among them. What happens when those scenes are held hostage to political brinkmanship?

Umair’s frustration is palpable but pointed elsewhere: "It's high time that the majority take the Ganga-Jamuna in their hand, because it's somehow becoming a very big burden on our shoulders."

The festival will likely happen in early 2026, delayed but not dead. For young Delhiites like Ayesha Patel, a student who attended for the first time last year, the drama is disheartening. "I went expecting something dusty and old and stuck in time. Instead, I found this incredibly alive thing; kids on swings, elders sharing chai, qawwals singing, this palpable feeling of belonging. To think that might not happen because someone won't sign papers? It makes you wonder if the city even wants its own soul."

Perhaps that's the real question: not whether Phool Walon Ki Sair will survive this year's postponement, but whether a city can retain its cultural identity when those meant to protect it treat tradition as a bureaucratic checkbox rather than a beating heart. Bahadur Shah Zafar understood that Delhi was both Hindu and Muslim, that its soul lived in the space between dargah and mandir. Two centuries later, we're still learning that lesson—or forgetting it entirely.