The unending holiday season in India

Monday, December 28, 2009
Aakar Patel

In India, secularism is inclusive. Europe’s secularism measures distance of the state from Christianity. Indians think of secularism as equal respect for all religions. This is supposed to reflect the Hindu belief in tolerance. One famous Sanskrit line is: Vasudhaiva kutumbakam. Vasudha is mother earth and kutumb is family and so the line means the whole world is a family. However, our recent record of religious violence shows that inclusive secularism isn’t always followed. Often unhinged views on religion are tolerated under this formulation of non-interference, and journalist George Verghese described Indian secularism as ‘equal respect for everyone’s communalism’.

But the doctrine of inclusive secularism is India’s constitution and perhaps at some point we will become good enough to deserve that fine document. Since the state tries to be inclusive, every religion’s celebrations are official holidays in India. Our calendar is the most colourful in the world.

Many urban Americans now greet each other this season with the words ‘Happy holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’. This is typical European thoughtfulness of the feelings of others. The ‘happy holidayers’ want to share their joy but want not to offend Jews and others. Personally I like ‘Merry Christmas’ and see no reason why anybody should be offended that Christians are celebrating the birth of their saviour. In India, however, you couldn’t say ‘Happy holidays’ because we have them through the year. Let’s have a look.

January has four: Makar Sankranti, Vasant (or Basant) Panchami, Republic Day and Moharram. Sankranti is one of the few solar holidays we have, since the Hindu calendar, like the Islamic one, is lunar. Sankranti always falls on January 14, when the Sun transits into Capricorn. Gujaratis do not celebrate it in a religious way, though some other Hindus do, and on this day we fly kites all day and eat laddoos of til (sesame seed). All faiths celebrate it in Gujarat even though it may be seen as a Hindu festival. Surat’s best kites are made in the suburb of Rander, by Muslim craftsmen of the first calibre. I used to go with a friend’s father in the 80s, and the old man we would buy kites from had been supplying the family for 40 years.

Vasant Panchmi is the fifth day of the Hindu month of Mesh, and the first day of spring. It is essentially a North Indian festival, which is why it is also celebrated in Lahore, but not in Karachi. The reason for this is that cities like Bombay and Karachi don’t really have a winter or a spring, our seasons being: hot, warm and wet.

Republic Day is when India’s constitution was put into force in 1950.

Most Indians do not recognise Shia as separate from Sunni and we think Moharram as something all Muslims commemorate. In Bombay, the chant in the procession is: ‘Ya Hasan ya Hussain, Hum na they, hum na they’. In Calcutta, where many Muslims are not Urdu-speaking, the chant is ‘Hasan-Hussain dada-bhai’ indicating that the Imams were elder and younger brother, or simply ‘Hasan-Hussain zindabad’.

Moharram is moving, and while I was familiar with the second line of Muhammad Ali Jauhar’s famous couplet, my gooseflesh flared the first time I read the whole poem and reached its end: Qatl-e-Hussain asl mein marg-e-Yazid hai/Islam zinda hota hai har Karbala kay baad (Hussain’s murder will actually be tyrant Yazid’s end: Islam revives itself after every tragedy).

February has Maha Shivratri and Eid-e-Milad. Shiv is the god Hindus believe will ultimately destroy the universe, but is worshipped because he consumed a deadly poison and saved the world. As an offering to him, many Hindus leave (and consume) ganja or cannabis indica, the drug that is associated with the cult of Shiva.

Eid-e-Milad is celebrated with processions, but it seems to me that these are led mainly by modernist organisations like the Jamaat-e-Islami and, in Bombay, the Raza Academy.

March has the festival of Holi, marking the end of winter. We celebrate Holi by smearing colour and splashing water on each other and, unsurprisingly, young men and women enjoy it the most because there is a fair amount of licence in touching. The drink consumed is bhang, cannabis indica paste and with milk. Government-licensed stores sell it through the year in many states, and it is not difficult to see why the hippies were drawn to India.

March also has Ram Navami, birthday of Lord Ram, and Mahavir Jayanti, the day remembering the last of the great Jain saints. The Jain religion is interesting because it does not believe in god or creator. A small community, mainly found in Rajasthan and Gujarat, Jains are the most successful of India’s trading communities.

April has Good Friday, marking the crucifixion of Christ; and Vaishakh or Baisakhi, the start of the harvest season.

May has Buddha Purnima, marking the passing of Lord Buddha. For most Indian Buddhists, however, the big days are April 14, Ambedkar’s birthday, and December 6, the commemoration of his death. Dr Ambedkar was author of India’s constitution and leader of the Untouchables or Dalits. His conversion to Buddhism in 1956 began an exodus of Dalits out of Hinduism, and most Buddhists in India are today from this community. December 6 is also the day in 1992 when the Babri Masjid was torn down.

August has Independence day on the 15th, one day after Pakistan’s because astrologers held the 14th as inauspicious and asked Nehru to wait till midnight.

August also has Onam, Raksha Bandhan and Parsi New Year, which is celebrated in Bombay and Gujarat mainly. I think the Parsis are the best Gujarati community and they are the greatest of all Indian communities.

Onam is a Hindu festival celebrated in Kerala with a magnificent snake boat race. Raksha Bandhan is when girls tie a thread, a rakhi, around their brother’s wrist and seek his protection (and his cash). It is a secular festival and it is said that emperor Humayun responded to a rakhi sent to him by Rani Karnavati of Chittor when she was under attack from the Sultan of Gujarat. Humayun came too late and the Rajput women had burnt themselves. Akbar would later level Chittor in his most savage siege, in 1568.

September has Janmashtami, which celebrates the birth of Lord Krishna. On this night we play teen patti (and lose money). Punjabis are in my experience the best card players in India, because they are flamboyant and brave bettors unperturbed by bad hands. The month also has Eidul-Fitr and Ganesh Chaturthi, on which we pacify the god of obstacles. This is Ganesh with his elephant head, whose idol we bring home and later immerse in water amid dancing and singing. The festival is quite recent, and was made popular in the 1890s by Bal Gangadhar Tilak.

October has Gandhi Jayanti, marking his birthday, and Dussehra, marking the death of Ravan at the hand of Ram.

November has Diwali, the biggest Hindu festival where we celebrate the victory of light over darkness. Because we do this by setting off far too many crackers, we also celebrate the victory of cacophony over silence. It also has Bakra Eid (which I personally am partial to over other Eids because I am sent biryani) and Guru Nanak Jayanti, when the Sikhs remember the founder of their religion. The fifth of the 10 great Sikh gurus, Arjun, is cremated in Lahore, and his Gurdwara is next to the tiny, elegant tomb of Allama Iqbal in the Badshahi masjid area. A Pakistani acquaintance of mine in Islamabad is married to an Indian girl and their son is called Arjun. Though Pakistan forbids Muslims from entering the Gurdwara, we all went in anyway and the priests were delighted to cuddle the little boy.

December has Christmas, and right now it is quite pleasant around my flat in the heart of the Catholic suburb of Bandra.

All of these are just the official government holidays. We have many other local festivals including nine nights of Gujarati women dancing for fecundity during Navratri, and four days of Durga pooja in Bengal, celebrating the destroyer goddess.

We are a religious people and it shows in our life.

Indians are a billion people inflicting our pieties publicly on each other. And we are constantly demanding the attention of god, though we claim to believe — through the Hindu belief in advait (non-dualism) and the Sufi doctrine of wahdat al-wajood — that he is everywhere.

The writer is director with Hill Road Media in Bombay. Email: aakar @hillroadmedia.com