In the first week of April, the BJP organised numerous marches with open sword wielding activists on the occasion of Ram Nabami.
This religious occasion had been unheard-of in West Bengal except in the Hindi speaking pockets of the state. For Bengalis, Ram has largely remained a fictional figure. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement had few takers in West Bengal even in its heydays, and that too mostly limited to sections of the non-Bengali populations of the state. This year, however, even small children were seen parading with swords and sharp weapons. The march, aimed to mimic the Muharram procession of Muslims, has been a partial success so far as the Bengalis looked upon it with some anxiety. Some Hindu Bengalis even took part by chanting in Hindi. The incident passed off without overt violence. At a much larger and benign level, Holi has already set the template for this cultural conversion.
Holi, a festival of colours, is considered quite special in Uttar Pradesh where it is celebrated with lots of pomp. What India sells in the form of Holi to rest of the world is a colourful occasion that unifies all Indians. However, the festival has long been wielded as a divisive tool by successive regimes. This year was no exception. No government in Delhi has ever been an exception to this norm, and that’s more than unfortunate for a diverse federal democracy like India.
Early last month, it was Holi but it wasn’t really the only ‘festival of colours’, as it was one among multiple such festivals. For example, in West Bengal, Tripura, and wide parts of Assam, the festival of colours is Dol Jatra, and it does not even fall on the same date as Holi. The origin stories of Holi and Dol Jatra are also radically different. Holi originated around the burning of Holika, and the legend has its actual origin in the Multan region of present day Pakistan. Dol Jatra, on the other hand, has nothing to do with Holika, Multan or Pakistan.
People in this regiondo not have a single uniform ‘festival of colours’. Thus, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted on March 13by saying, ‘Greetings on the festival of colours, Holi. May the festival spread joy & warmth everywhere’; he created a blanket of imagined cultural homogeneity and wrapped it over all Indians. For him, Holi may be a festival of colours, but for others, it isn’t. It is especially problematic when he tries to impose itas such on areas where it is not the festival of colours. Why is it always the case that a festival that is necessarily centredaround the Hindustani ethno-cultural zones is required to spread everywhere? Why is it the case that the PM never tweets a wish on the occasion of Dol Jatra. Similarly, why is Diwali the ‘festival of lights’, and Kali Puja is not? I am a Bengali. For me, Dol Jatra is the festival of colours and Kali Puja is an invocation of our mother goddess accompanied by lights and firecrackers.
It does not stop at that. After the Holi greetings by Modi, many greeted him back in either Hindi or English. Not in any regional language, not even in Gujarati. Thus, we have a curious case where the PM of all ethno-linguistic nationalities uses his social media accounts to endorse only one festival that is primarily celebrated in the Hindi belt. Given that such accounts run under political direction, it also shows that even if the government’s cultural and linguistic repertoire is limited, the team managing these accounts shares them. It’s relevant to mention here that most citizens do not understand Hindi.
CPI(M) General Secretary and Rajya Sabha MP from West Bengal Sitaram Yechury also took to Twitter and posted a similar greeting on Holi. This is from an MP who represents a state where the festival has marginal following. Like Modi, Yechury did not post any greeting on account of Dol Jatra. Thus, this is a disease that cuts across political ideologies and represents a higher order ideology that may come in shades of red or saffron but ultimately represents a culture correlated with the Hindi belt.
This forced hierarchy of cultures has official endorsement as witnessed inthe list of public holidays where, again, Holi is recognised as one, unlike other festivals. Priorities and ideology supplement each other.
The message is clear. Holi is ‘national’ while all other festivals of colour are ‘local’. Whose ‘local’ becomes ‘national’ and whose ‘national’ is rendered ‘local’ is a contest that goes back to the foundation of India. But for now,the Indian union operates as a plural and federal society in rhetoric and a majoritarian Hindustani nation-state in practice.
Why don’t we just sit back and enjoy the festival of colours — whatever name it is called by? Why don’t we just consider Dol Jatra as a “variant” of Holi? This ‘magnanimous’ inclusion has a predictable direction. It is easy for people to ‘look past’ variations, when the hierarchy of variations favours their cultural world. Others ‘look past’ to be accepted by the ‘mainstream’. Why it is always the case that Hindustani forms of religious and cultural expression take precedence? Why is the concept of ‘all India’ and Hindustan so remarkably similar? What does it mean for the rest of us? Living in the penumbra of Hindustan?
The writer is a brain scientist and commentator based in Bengal