The Grinch who steals Christmas: Holidays and the Hindutva state

Original illustration by Angela Ferrao

We live in interesting times. Sometime around the middle of this month the press broke reports that the Union Government wanted to mark the twenty-fifth of December, birthdays of Hindu nationalist leaders Atal Behari Vajpayee and Madan Mohan Malaviya, as ‘Good Governance’ day. Towards this end, the media informed us, schools would remain open, and students would be encouraged to participate in a national essay writing competition. Howls of protest rang out across the country, and the Ministry of Human Resource Development hurriedly rubbished these reports. There was no question of having schools open on Christmas Day, they assured the country and added that the competition was voluntary and entries could be submitted virtually.

For the moment then, the crisis seemed to have receded. Nevertheless, the episode refreshed my memory over two earlier episodes involving holidays. One is an event that lies within the public domain, the other a personal memory that I would like to share and reflect on.

The first episode dates back a number of years, when the government of the then Chief Minister of Goa, Manohar Parrikar, contemplated withdrawing the public holidays on the Good Friday and the feast of St. Francis Xavier. As can be expected, there was a hue and cry then too, until this controversial move was undone, with Parrikar later suggesting that the move had been an error.

The second episode dates from the time when I was working with an NGO in Hyderabad. I realised with some shock that this corporate-funded entity had not declared Eid (I forget which of the two Eids it was) a holiday. On the contrary, it was marked as an optional holiday. If one chose, for religious reasons, one could take the day off, but the rest of the office would continue working. I also recall being told that one could take the day off, but I would be merely eating into my own stock of optional holidays. I recollect sensing the suggestion of the threat that I would be compromising my days of Christian celebration were I to take the day off to commemorate the feast.

I was quite upset by this scenario. I had recently returned from Patna where I had a number of Muslim friends and had been sucked into a series of Eids, weddings, and other celebrations. Even though I was bereft of this network in Hyderabad, I could not contemplate an Eid that was to be spent working, instead of feasting with friends. It hurt, but rather than create trouble and stand up for a principle I was not yet sure of, I went to work that Eid day, mournfully walking past masses of men praying at the mosques along the route I took to work.

These memories were swirling around my head these past couple of days I realised that the issue of cancelling holidays, or restricting these holidays is much more important than showing disrespect or disregard for religious minorities. On the contrary, such governmental actions ensure that religious boundaries are hardened and religions are formed into water tight compartments. The learning from Hyderabad was just that, you can choose to be a Catholic and take your holiday, or you can choose to show solidarity with Muslims. We are not preventing you from celebrating Eid, but you need to make a choice. Similarly, had the feast of St. Francis Xavier continued to have lost its holiday, a great number of Catholics would have still taken the day off to visit Old Goa and venerate the relics of the saint. This option would perhaps not have been so definite for those Goans who are not practicing Catholics but still venerate St. Francis Xavier. It is possible that they would have continued with their daily routines. Similarly had the holiday on Good Friday been cancelled it would not only have complicated the possibility of having clear roads for the public processions that mark Good Friday, it would also have complicated the participation of non-Catholics, who light up the streets, and offer incense to perfume the funeral path of Christ. 

We must remember that we live in an environment where thanks to the threat of an aggressive Hindu nationalism, all religious groups have been hardening their identities and castigating what are called syncretic practices. When a government restricts a holiday, therefore, or fails to provide one, it is lending its own strength against these already existent social pressures. The issue of cancelling holidays therefore does not merely impact on the group for whom it is most significant. It impacts all, preventing communal celebrations, visits, exchange of sweets. It goes towards creating a fractured society.

It is in this context that we should evaluate the clarifications of Smriti Irani, Minister for Human Resources Development, on the issue of celebration of ‘Good Governance’ day, as well as the subsequent note from the Prime Minister’s Office that mandated various officers to mark ‘Good Governance’ day.  What is clear is that rather than let Christmas day be, the Central Government has identified the twenty-fifth of December as the day to commemorate ‘Good Governance’ day. The essay competition will continue apace even though the event will be restricted to submissions over the internet. Further, various officers of the Government were expected to attend and conduct commemorations linked to the theme of good governance.

What this effectively amounts to is providing an alternative to the celebrations of Christmas that have become a major feature across India. One does not need to be Christian, nor indeed have Christian friends to celebrate the day. Regardless of their religious persuasion, people engage in secular celebrations of this feast by organising Christmas parties, arranging visits from Santa Claus and the like. The fact is that thanks to a variety of factors, a number of Indians, and especially urban and upwardly mobile Indians are ‘culturally Christian’. They have imbibed many Christian and/or western cultural traditions and celebrate them as if these traditions are their own. That these aspects are not strictly religious is not important, it is in fact exactly the point, that the festival has ceased to be religious alone, but is a cross-communal secular festival. Indeed, if one is to take the historical novel, The Mirror of Beauty seriously, Christmas, or Bada Din was a significant festival in Delhi by the time of the last Mughal emperor, and avidly celebrated by the Mughal elites.

Given the kind of pressure that Indian society places on students to excel and gain laurels, one can imagine that children would be encouraged, if not pressured, to take part in a national competition that could get them national recognition. Remember we live in a country where even a certificate of participation is regarded as useful. As such, having a competition at the time of the Christmas holidays, with a submission on Christmas day, no matter that the submission can be made virtually, ensures that one has created a substantial diversion from the pleasures, and significance, of Christmas. In addition to these competitions, the low-key government commemorations of good governance  that continued even while the holiday was still officially on clearly indicate that the conspiracy to steal Christmas is, therefore, still on.

It should be noted, however, that it is not only the BJP government that is engaged in a project that dismisses Christmas. A variety of organisations in India, including academic and non-governmental, as well as those patronised by the nominally secular-liberals think nothing of hosting significant retreats immediately prior to, or soon after Christmas day. This scheduling ensures that very often Christians have to either opt out of Christmas, or the event, or spend a good part of Christmas day in travel. And, as I pointed out earlier, this callous scheduling does not impact Christians alone, but fractures the possibility of non-Christians in participating in what is a wonderful feast of familial gathering. The loss is communal.

We live in a country where the plethora of holidays we enjoy is often castigated. Over the year these holidays have been vilified merely as days free from work. What this vilification does not recognise is that holidays are a way for us to indicate that an event is important enough for us to take time off work and engage with each other. Even if we choose to not engage with other communities, the holiday continues to be a mark that this other community is important. It is this tradition of honouring those who are unlike us that is at stake when holidays are so callously countermanded.

Feliz Natal! Have a blessed and joyous Christmas season!

(A version of this text was first published in the O Heraldo dated 26  Dec 2014)

The Moral Politics of Diwali

“ek baras meiN ek baar hee jagti holi kee jwaala

  ek baar hee lagti baaji jalti deepoN kee maala

  duniya waaloN kintu kisi din aa madiraalay meiN dekho

  din meiN holi raat diwaali roz manaati madhushaala”

 But once a year do the flames of Holi rise.
 But once is the dice rolled and the garlands of lamps lit.
 Yet, come to the tavern people of the world and behold,

 Where every day is Holi, a every night Diwali.

The verse above is extracted from the poem Madhushala penned by the celebrated Hindustani poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan. Drawing from the tropes of Islamic mysticism, while using the trope of alcohol, the tavern and worldly excess, the poem was in fact intended to be a mystical allusion to the exercise of finding truth in the world. 

Poor Bachchan, up in heaven, must probably be thanking his stars that he wrote the poem when he did, because he would have probably been at a loss to find the appropriate metaphors in a day and age when every day is treated as Holi and every night Diwali.

In an age of consumerist excess, especially in the urban world, we seem to have forgotten the meaning and the existence of the darkness of the night. The beauty of Diwali of yore was that the lamps that were lit could be read as an invitation to philosophical contemplation; a testament to the power of nature, the determination of the human being to overcome the challenges of nature, and an invitation to recognize that overwhelming nature made human existence itself bare.

Unfortunately, however, like so much of Hinduism, Diwali too is being held hostage by the forces of the Hindu right. I am referring in particular to a post from Dr.Subramanian Swamy that suggested that the pleas that Diwali be marked by a restrained use of fireworks was one more conspiracy against Hindus. His argument was that given that the larger amount of noxious gases are released by industries and automobiles, one should really not create a problem about the pollution caused by fireworks on a single day’s celebration.

As usual Swamy misses the point, that the point is not about the amount of pollution, but about the concentration of it in a single evening. If only the noise and smoke were restricted to a single evening though! Further, Swamy seems to not see that given the Diwali occurs just once a year, the fact of abjuring noise and smoke pollution would make a powerful symbol that would aid our tackling with other pollutions through the rest of the year.

 

Suggesting to some neighbours that we hold a Diwali celebration without fireworks, a neighbor responded “Diwali without fireworks is like Holi without colour or Christmas without Santa!” I was struck by the comment since, as Bachchan observed in his poem, Diwali was originally about the strings of lights, not of noise. What made her response odd was that Santa Claus can hardly be seen as integral to Christmas. Indeed, some Christians would argue that the problem is that the emphasis in our consumerist times has shifted from the infant Jesus to Santa Claus.

Given that this Christmas-is-about-Christ-not-Santa argument is often articulated by right-wing Christians, I am hesitant to endorse it totally. I endorse it only to the extent that despite the fact that Santa Claus is the tool through which Christmas has become more than just a Christian festival, it has also become the symbol of the consumerist excess that has demolished the potency of Christmas as a festival of hope and sharing.

A better example that one could give when arguing for a softer Diwali is that eschewing crackers would perhaps make it a more moral festival. It would assert celebrations that are based not on selfish pleasure and the assertion of privilege, but the assertion of a politics of justice. After all this is what the politics of Diwali is made out to be isn’t it? The politics of a just Diwali would be a politics that asserts that noisy crackers are a violence on those who are not bursting the crackers, those who are old and infirm. The abjuring of crackers would make a statement in favour of labour and against the perilous conditions, often endured by children, in which most crackers in India are produced.

The search for the morality in our celebrations of Diwali would perhaps also awaken us to the moral economy of the festival. This moral economy suggests that excess is best appreciated when it occurs as an aberration. A festival of lights loses relevance when our every night obliterates all form of natural darkness. A reference to nature would also suggest that it is against the background of nature that excess can be ideally judged. The moonless night (Amavasya) of the month of Kartik is held to be the darkest night of the year, and it against this darkness that the brave lights of Diwali shine forth. This could be argued to be the context of Diwali. Lose this context of darkness and one loses the meaning of the festival itself.

I have often thought that the lamps of Diwali offer a remarkable statement of bravery in the face of vulnerability, possibly from a recognition of the fact that those brave lights last only so long as their oil, and only as long the wind does not snuff them out. A shift of emphasis away from these oil (or wax) lamps, to electricity and noise shifts the emphasis away from resolute vulnerability to rude assertion. It is perhaps for this reason that members of the Hindu right would prefer that Diwali be celebrated with the violent assertions of noise and absolute assertion of masculine power over the softness of the autumn night.

Whichever way you choose to celebrate Diwali, however, Diwali Mubarak.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo dated 31 October 2014)