14th November 2001: As the first rays of the sun cut through the long shadows of the trees outside our apartment, my brother shook me awake. "It's Deepavali!"
I disliked the loud atom bombs, but liked the bijlis, flowerpots, and chakras. The entire family soon joined us downstairs, like they did every year, as we lit a candle behind a pillar in the parking lot (which served as an undying flame where we would light our sparklers, matches and agarbathis which were used to light the crackers). Soon the whole building gathered, and before you knew it, it was time for lunch!
We spent the rest of the day meeting relatives and neighbours, sharing sweets and good wishes, doing a lot of phone calls, while the TV went on in the background. In the evening, the sky lit up and when we looked east towards the ocean, we saw - above the lighthouse - myriad colours raining upon the city.
Deepavali has always been the most wonderful day of the year!
Fast forward 19 years: 14th November 2020
This is a strange Deepavali. It is also a time to look back and be grateful for having made it this far, not just a time to look forward towards the prosperous days which are to come.
But as always, it is about being thankful for the love and care we receive. It about being with the family under one roof and spending time together. It is about lighting a diya for all those beloved souls who have left us.
It is also a time when Deepavali has been made more materialistic than it has ever been before. It is a time when we wear a kurta long enough to click a few photos that will look good on Instagram. Diwali is now about buying expensive sweets, not making them with family at home (our new lifestyles don't prioritize such activities). Diwali is now about using the promo code FESTIVE40. It is about the newest Snapchat filter, a few intelligent Muhurat Trades on the Bombay Stock Exchange, and a virtuous post about not bursting crackers.
I am now in Delhi where the AQI has been 600+ on many occasions in the past week. We now have two air purifiers at home, and they run 24x7. Breathing this level of particulate matter in the air makes it equivalent to smoking about 30 cigarettes each day. The air in a wise man's words is "filthy".
While the root cause of the problem is the large-scale burning of crops in Punjab and Haryana, Mr. Kejriwal has taken an easier route. He has banned the sale of fire-crackers in Delhi, in a feeble attempt to arrest the deterioration of the capital's air quality. This has obviously enraged several factions of the society. #हम_तो_पटाखे_फोड़ेंगे (We will burst crackers) is trending on Twitter.
While I have personally not burst crackers over the past 4-5 years (with the exception of a box of sparklers that I ritualistically share with neighbours and friends on Deepavali-evening), I find it disturbing that such a restrictive-order has been passed in what, otherwise, is a free market. In that light, I empathize with the popular uproar against such government interference.
Understanding Risk The most common argument against firecrackers is that they can cause a sudden spike of pollution in the immediate vicinity of the firecrackers for a short period of time.
This can make the air more harmful to breathe especially for the people in the immediate proximity of cracker bursting (including those who are lighting the wick), and therefore firecrackers need regulation. In a way, this is similar to protecting people from the harms of eating fast-food. While we understand that obesity is a risk, we don’t ban restaurants that serve burgers.
Risk is always assessed as a trade-off. There are gains and losses, and one can draw a line where the losses outweigh the gains and vice-versa. Vehicles on the road cause millions of roadside fatalities each year, but we do not ban transportation or driving. Instead, we set speed limits and mandate that passengers wear seat-belts.
When a government bans or censors any action or speech (or thought), it should be a result of a thorough assessment of risk and understanding all the preventive and mitigative options at hand. The last-minute firecracker-ban in our case is simply a result of lazy policy-making where officials simply haven’t done their homework.
There are always alternative options: (a) to regulate the types of firecrackers, and promote only the bursting of “green crackers”, (b) to control the number and size of firecrackers allowed to be purchased from stores, (c) to centrally create Diwali experiences, where people of a locality can gather and observe the festivities together (like on the fourth of July in the US), or (d) regulate the time and place where fire-crackers are allowed to be burst in a city.
It is also important for policy “experts” to understand the people, just as it is for people to understand the experts. And I will elaborate on this in the coming sections.
Traditions without Meaning
Many modern Hindus who celebrate Deepavali don't fully know (nor do they think it necessary to know) the itihasa that provides us with the reason to celebrate this day. But for them too, it is an important festival to meet and get together with their friends and relatives, to share a few sweets, snacks and laughs.
Even when one dissociates the festival from its scriptural roots (if this is indeed possible), it is clear that the societal importance of Deepavali in modern India cannot be overstated. The rituals associated with the festival are grounded in tradition, passed on from generation to generation, changing albeit gradually over the ages.
If one were to extract the essence of the festival, by removing the layers of historical and cultural meaning it is shrouded in, it is this: Light (of Dharma). Or, as we learnt in our Social Studies text books - "Diwali is the festival of lights".
In an endeavour to foster communal brotherhood, and in the proud tradition of secular policymaking around the world (this is not limited to just India), the euphemism "Festival of Lights" has been found the only acceptable and politically-correct one. It allows for feeble clichés like "good wins over evil", and distances the celebration from its own roots. Lord Rāma himself is vilified, and it is considered immoral in certain circles to celebrate his victory over Rāvana (which is technically the same as celebrating the victory of good over evil).
The same people who decry Shri Rāma may well be found sipping a glass of wine in their latest Fab India kurtis in a South Delhi Diwali party. The festival is therefore ripped out from its religious origins, leaving only a flimsy veneer of traditional Indianness that is allowed to rear its uncomfortable head once or twice a year.
Faith Is The New Shame
In Tier I India, the temple is almost a place of shame. This is true, not only in India, but in most developed economies across the world: to believe is to be backward. Atheists, emboldened by a half-knowledge of Science, are the new alphas.
It is a well-known fact that as a society prospers, its dependence on religion (and dogma) decreases. However, a practicing Hindu in modern India is often made to feel backward, ignorant, and ashamed, often in ways that Christians or Muslims are never made to feel in countries where they are a majority.
History tells us that several Muslim invaders who failed to successfully convert or assimilate with the indigenous people of India went to great lengths to subvert Hindu faith. Of course, not all Mughal emperors were averse to Hindu festivals, but Aurangzeb in particular focused singularly on banning the celebration of Deepavali in 1665.
Our British history which exerts a more powerful influence on modern India than the Mughal-period further restricted the development of our indigenous schools of thought. Missionaries in particular made extraordinary efforts to fuse and adapt Christian faith to Indian ways, making our next generations more in their own mold. Once they owned the way of our thought, they could after all rule (exploit) us better.
These portions of medieval and modern history, coupled with the current cultural dominance of the Western world, exert an almighty influence on the modern Tier I Indian. While the atheist lens has become more popular, it is often viewed (by those who possess these lenses) as the only "correct" lens. Unfortunately, when one is unable to see all points of view, they are usually rushed into thinking that they must be right.
Many people in the position to influence policy and law are limited by this lens. Having been educated to believe that their own particular skeptical, secular perspectives are in the right, they fail to understand the people who their policies affect.
Historically, bursting crackers together in a community is an opportunity to interact, share and connect. I remember this one Deepavali, in 2010, which I spent away from home at a friend’s place in Dehradun. His father had a huge bag of firecrackers, and all the children in the street took turns to burst them. Several neighbours gathered outside the house, and it was a beautiful way to connect with relatives and friends who we don’t see in our daily lives.
Now with a cracker-ban, such spontaneous gatherings shall sadly not happen.
“Wish you a Clean, Noiseless, Safe Diwali”
Hundreds of popular Whatsapp forwards flow into our phones on Deepavali, and many of them contain words such as “safe”, “noiseless”, and “clean”.
Swiss philosopher and linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure put forward a theory which differentiates between the denotation and connotation of a statement. Denotation is the strict dictionary meaning of a word; Connotation is the emotional and imaginative association surrounding a word.
For example, the word “cow” denotes a four-legged bovine, typically with two horns that we are all familiar with. But the connotation of the word “cow” may be different for different people. It may conjure up a mental image of the sacred cow or gau mātā, the divine cow which nourishes our family with her milk; for someone else, “cow” may make them think of a barbecue and its fresh red meat.
In the same way, while the statement “Wish you a clean, noiseless, safe Diwali” denotes something perfectly alright, it is alarming that the wish has very little to do with the spirit of Deepavali and the victory of light (dharma), and everything to do with telling someone else how they should celebrate on that day.
Why “safe”? Was Deepavali unsafe before you wished me thus? And why “noiseless”? Most people not only take the noise of firecrackers on Deepavali in their stride, but they generally enjoy firecrackers.
I often hear someone wishing, "I want clean, noiseless festivals, and I prefer chocolates over Indian ghee-based sweets as they are healthier." They could well cite the exact decibel-level above which we feel uncomfortable, or the number of calories in a besan laddoo vis-à-vis a cube of dark chocolate. Many people who belong to this camp enjoy drinking alcohol on social occasions. But doesn’t alcohol impair our judgement and our physical health? In response to this, people say “I drink in moderation. I know when to stop.”
Such a double-truth is thus maintained by most of us: one nuanced solution for things we truly care about, and another crude zero-or-one kind of solution for things we do not like.
The scientific inquisition that has led to the cracker ban is not true to the scientific spirit. It is ideological in itself.
Why Can't You Plant a Tree for Diwali instead of Bursting Crackers?
A prominent "personality" on social media recently asked this inept question. Of course, it can be countered with a set of equally ridiculous questions such as "Why don't you cut a cake on Eid instead of a goat?" or "Why can't you plant a coniferous tree, instead of cutting one down for Christmas?". But such questions serve no point, as rituals are built over ages, passed on from generation to generation until they gain acceptance from the community.
It is more useful to understand the motivation of the person asking such a question. Across religious groups, it is more common for a supposed insider to ask these questions. This angers the community even more, and in the age of social media, anger empowers the instigator.
The reason for such behaviour is usually one of these two reasons: firstly, in an atheistic world guided only by science, where there is no ideological right or wrong, it is considered beneficial to question everything. Questioning itself is the ultimate good, and answers are not as important. Therefore, it is easy to dispassionately question something that carries huge emotional meaning for another and consider oneself smart. Secondly, building of a new cult always requires distancing oneself from an older one, and pulling away sections of followers. Therefore, questioning one's own roots and virtue-signaling to people who belong to a similar mindset helps one foster one's own identify. In such situations, it is profitable to step on other people's toes.
So, Should you Burst Crackers on Deepavali?
Ideally, the government should regulate what types of crackers may or may not be used. For example, in some states, "green crackers" have been allowed. When effective regulation happens, industry realigns itself to ensure effective supply-demand matching under the new rules.
In terms of Delhi's air quality, a single day of cracker-bursting would have had negligible impact on the AQI which has been in the 600-800 level over the past week. What is required is a sustained year-round effort to improve Delhi's air, water and environment. Kejriwal's move is nothing more than lip-service, and has potentially done more bad than good for the people of Delhi. By banning fire-crackers at the last moment, the poorer sections involved in making these crackers and the shopkeepers and wholesalers who have stocked them are worst hit. Arvind Kejriwal's policies don't seem to favour the Aam Aadmi this time.
I myself have made some rava kesari, and will celebrate the day by going to the temple, meeting a few friends, lighting some lamps and relaxing at home with my wife and our four-month old puppy.
Happy Deepavali! दीपावली की हार्दिक शुभकामनाएं| இனிய தீபாவளி வாழ்த்துக்கள்.
