Christmas
Day as Good Governance Day? Santa’s day out with kids to be negated in
order that kids may recite poems about governance, as if to sneakily
suggest that Christmas is somehow a ‘foreign’ festival, Christianity a
religion from foreign lands, celebrated by ‘non-Indians’ read
westernised Macaulayputras? So marking Christmas is a colonial hangover,
its repudiation a sign of ‘Indian’ distinctiveness from the rest of the
world? How wrong can you get, HRD ministry!
Markets even across the so-called Vedic
heartland are alive with trees, stars, angels and carols, in Kerala mass
is said in Malayalam, in Goa in Konkani, and a typical Christmas meal
ranges from cake to spicy local fare, ladies attend church in their best
saris, and the ubiquitous red costume and flowing beard of Santa is
beloved of all kids. Santa speaks the language of love and the language
of kids. The star of Christmas doesn’t just rise in Bethlehem, it also
rises in the town of Kunnamkulam in Thrissur district where Christmas
stars are made and sent across India.
There are even Bharatanatyam adaptations
of the Christmas story, with Carnatic music and Christmas carols
together providing the musical score for a classical dance rendition of
the birth of Christ. Localities in Kolkata even perform Sri Jesus puja.
Midnight Mass in cities like Kolkata and Mumbai is a thoroughly
universal occasion, with scores of non-Christians streaming in to sing
carols.
For the millions of Indians educated in
missionary schools, Christianity was hardly the religion of fear that
the Sangh Parivar may believe it to be. We convent-educated types were
never in danger of conversion, we decorated Christmas trees, sang carols
and ate Christmas cake because of the plural non-denominational
festival of fun that Christmas was and is, its universality resting in
the fact that this is a day dedicated to joie de vivre, a day marked by a
plural Indian Christianity, where Christmas tree and carols coexisted
easily with kanjeevaram saris and traditional Hindu homes. Christmas was
always about a homespun desi Christianity in which as historian
Ramachandra Guha puts it, teachers named Mohammed Amin and Prem Sagar
Dwivedi presided over a college named St Stephen’s.
Today, like all festivals, the spiritual
may have become the commercial but all the colours of India are
represented at Christmas. So, no, HRD ministry, there’s no loss in
civilisational identity for those who heartily belt out jingle bells and
Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer on December 25.
0 comments:
Post a Comment