Skip to main content

The flickers of Diwali lamps

Let the lamps remain different


This is the seventh Diwali of mine in succession without any Diwali lamps anywhere in the neighbourhood. I live in a region of India where Diwali is not celebrated. Like most villages in Kerala, mine too does not celebrate Diwali though half its population is Hindu. This indifference to Diwali doesn’t signify anything more than the cultural diversity of India. Even the Hinduism in this country has more shades than the advocates of a monolithic Hindutva are ready to acknowledge.

One of the most beautiful aspects of India is its cultural diversity. The North-east is nothing like any other part of the country. Their foods, dresses, languages, and even physical appearances are an amazing contrast to those in the other parts of the country. The differences in the other parts (such as between north and south) may not be so highly accentuated but they are far too many to be accommodated comfortably in any system or ideology that ventures to homogenize them.

The cities in Kerala, however, celebrate Diwali on grand scales. That is because of the presence of people from the North in large numbers. It is not the Malayalis who celebrate the festival, in other words.

Should the North impose Diwali on all Indians just as they are going out of their way to impose Hindi?

According to a recent study, 305 attacks took place in India on Christians alone (leaving aside the countless assaults on the major enemies of Hindutva advocates) in 273 days in India. These attacks are all a part of a comprehensive strategy to impose one particular culture with its language and religion on entire India.

What is happening in India under Modi is a huge and cruel farce. Modi will be hugging the Pope in the Vatican while his supporters are attacking the Pope’s institutions in India. This is quite typical of what has happened in many parts of India earlier in history too.

For example, a group of people who came to be known as Namboothiris entered Kerala from the North sometime between the first and fourth centuries CE and soon became the lords of the entire region by employing strategies very similar to those wielded by the Modi-Shah duo today. Though these Namboothiris constituted less than one percent of Kerala’s population, they became the owners of most of the land and remained so until the 18th century by manipulating the political powers with the help of religion. Something similar is happening today in India. The only difference is that the corporate bigwigs are doing in India what the Namboothiris did in Kerala.

By the second half of 19th century, the Namboothiris in Kerala had become a totally degenerate people. Greed and lust had corroded their very souls.

Do I see the flicker of similar greed and lust (more for power now though the Namboothiris lusted after women as much as power) in the Diwali lamps nowadays? If the Festival of Lights can bring some enlightenment to our leaders, there is hope for a better India. I’d like to hope that this Diwali will bring some light at least to the people whose hearts are becoming increasingly darker.

Did someone tell me that Diwali is about the victory of the good over the evil? Well, wish you a Happy Diwali. 

PS. This is not meant to hurt anyone’s sentiments especially on the occasion of a festival. I lived in the North and Northeast for most part of my life as an adult and Diwali celebrations were very much a part of my life. Do I miss them? This post is an answer to that question. To myself more than to anyone else.



Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanNovember 4, 2021 at 12:49 PM

    Hari OM
    Deepavali is very much part of Tamil and Karnatakan traditions... and as Chinmaya Mission is essentially Keralite and Deepavali is a major celebration for us, I am surprised to read that you think it otherwise. The focus in the South is more the second of the five days, whilst the North favours the third day - the difference being the focus in the first is more spiritual, while the second is more earthly. Of course, like so many events (and I include Christmas!) commercialism has over-ridden the spiritual almost to the point of folk entirely ignoring the source of the festivals. Generalisation, of course, as many do still adhere.

    I do understand something of your aversion, though. When I saw how so many people were prepared to light up entire neighbourhoods with flashy lighting and bigger and better each year (as folk here do with Christmas lights) it makes a mockery of the original intent of lighting the diyas. I agree that imposition of celebration makes no celebration at all - imposition of 'faith' is an invasion. I too wish the leaders of India, and Australia and UK ... and many other nations could see the light! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 4, 2021 at 4:12 PM

      This morning I went to the Jan Seva Kendra nearest to my home for an official work. The man, son of the local Hindu temple priest, had opened the office as usual as I had expected. Diwali made no difference to him though he told me that only the online part of the work would be done today since all Central govt offices would be closed. I said I only wanted to get the online part done today.

      That's how Diwali looks like in my village and all the villages near me and most probably all over Kerala. There are changes taking place because of the increasing influence of the BJP and right wing organisations in the state too.

      Swami Chinmayananda was after all a co-founder or inspirer of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and it's no surprise that his institutions celebrate Diwali. Awakening the "Hindu consciousness" was one of the proclaimed objectives of Chinmayananda - very much in tune with the Hindutva ideology. I have no association with the cult except that a few of my acquaintance have been teachers in its schools for brief periods. They were all invariably happy to leave the jobs because they felt out of place there due to the way religion was taught and practised there.

      Delete
    2. Yamini MacLeanNovember 6, 2021 at 9:20 PM

      Hari OM
      ...and there is a reason I did not take the robes, despite having completed all relevant study and qualification.

      I do take exception to the calling of CM as a cult - it is not that, any more than the Roman Catholic church is a cult. It is, however, just as RC can be, or any other such institution, prone to the fundamentalist outlook.

      Though, in truth, Gurudev himself never advocated such. He very much allowed for pluralism in faith. However, his point was that if one was to claim to be Hindu, then it is necessary to behave as one and have the relevant knowledge to support it. This would apply, again, to any faith system. There are many 'mouth Christians' just as there are 'mouth Hindus'. Practice and application is another thing altogether.

      And, as your grind is, the imposition and insistance that any one system is the only one, or that any other is by that deficit 'wrong' is the basis of all unrest in such matters. To deny any the practice of their faith, whatever that be, on the basis that it does not fit with one's own beliefs, whatever they be, is a grave error of intellect and spirit. YAM xx

      Delete
  2. Jose D. MaliekalNovember 4, 2021 at 2:29 PM

    Fragmentation is a clinically practised strategy of the Sanghparivar.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 4, 2021 at 4:14 PM

      Undoubtedly. And they will do it holding aloft a flag with the inscription 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam'.

      Delete
  3. Jose D. MaliekalNovember 4, 2021 at 2:35 PM

    India is not a monolith of one single civilisation... but a mosaic and confluence of civilization(s).... breathing the mystical air of pluralism for more than millennia. Let there be a thousand Ramayana, and as many Mahabharathas. Let Ravana, as well as Rama be celebrated. “ There are many lamps... but One Light..” - Rumi

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Don Bosco

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...
2 comments
Read more

Relatives and Antidepressants

One of the scenes that remain indelibly etched in my memory is from a novel of Malayalam writer O V Vijayan. Father and little son are on a walk. Father tells son, “Walk carefully, son, otherwise you may fall down.” Son: “What will happen if I fall?” Father: "Relatives will laugh.” I seldom feel comfortable with my relatives. In fact, I don’t feel comfortable in any society, but relatives make it more uneasy. The reason, as I’ve understood, is that your relatives are the last people to see any goodness in you. On the other hand, they are the first ones to discover all your faults. Whenever certain relatives visit, my knees buckle and the blood pressure shoots up. I behave quite awkwardly. They often describe my behaviour as arising from my ego, which used to be a oversized in yesteryear. I had a few such visitors the other day. The problem was particularly compounded by their informing me that they would be arriving by about 3.30 pm and actually reaching at about 7.30 pm. ...
16 comments
Read more

Coffee can be bitter

The dawns of my childhood were redolent of filtered black coffee. We were woken up before the birds started singing in the lush green village landscape outside home. The sun would split the darkness of the eastern sky with its splinter of white radiance much after we children had our filtered coffee with a small lump of jaggery. Take a bite of the jaggery and then a sip of the coffee. Coffee was a ritual in our home back then. Perhaps our parents believed it would jolt our neurons awake and help us absorb our lessons before we set out on the 4-kilometre walk to school after all the morning rituals at home. After high school, when I left home for further studies at a distant place, the ritual of the morning coffee stopped. It resumed a whole decade later when I completed my graduation and took up a teaching job in Shillong. But I had lost my taste for filtered coffee by then; tea took its place. Plain tea without milk – what is known as red tea in most parts of India. Coffee ret...
18 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more