Guiding Light: Hindu Festivals And Pushback Against Criticism

For years, there has been a lot of advice given to the Hindu community about their various festivals. The community has generally been tolerant and resilient. But now, in the last couple of years, I find a great pushback coming from the community. That's not a bad thing.

Like, very often for Mahashivaratri, a common question is asked “Why are you wasting that much milk?” The reply is that it is given as prasad to people after puja.

“Holi is about wasting water.” It is surely less than the water an American uses for shower in a day.

“What about all the dogs that get scared during Diwali with the crackers?” says a dog lover. Well if you are really an animal lover, how can you chop them, cook them and eat them? Does that really make you an animal lover?

So like the above, there have been various pushbacks — retorts, reactions and responses coming from the Hindu community. Of course, some go even the extra mile saying, “When there is an Eid celebration without cruelty to animals, or a Christmas celebration without alcohol, or a New Year celebration which does not have billions of dollars of fireworks which, presumably, does not give out oxygen, then we'll have Diwali without crackers.”

These pushbacks are understandable because, for too long, Hindus were given this advice only during Hindu festivals, while nothing was raised during the festivals of any other community.

Having said that, some amount of pushback is healthy when necessary. We still need to look at own actions. The traditional answer to the criticism about Deepavali is that we use lights as it is symbolic lighting up of the skies for our ancestors who came during Pitru Paksha to go back. It’s symbolic and therefore, it is a festival where the focus is on the lights (deepa). Should we really go overboard on the crackers?

Maybe it is time for us to be objective towards our own actions, so that along with the pushback, we can have a healthy and balanced approach.

The writer is the founder of Aarsha Vidya Foundation. You can write to him at aarshavidyaf@gmail.com