The pollutant Diwali just got over. And since going through another horrendous of native festival – starting with Holi when insane amount of water gets wasted then onto Mahashivaratri where insane amount of milk is wasted, I realized the new set PILs we can filed to strangle all these anti-environment, un-secular, pagan festivals once and for all.
The Marigold massacre – The poor native flower in India is sadly used for all festivals in India. Hundreds of thousands of tons of these flowers are bought and sold across India just for it to be hung dry on the doors or gates. Worse, they are thrown indiscriminately in temples. Next day the dried flowers are simply thrown away with utter disregard to the precious life of the flower. So not only this beautiful flower is massacred but by throwing them away, our environment is irrevocably. I suggest to file a PIL in the courts to ban use of not just Marigold flowers but any flower for any of the festivals that are even remotely related to native majoritarian religion.
The Incense Burning – It is a truth that Diwali crackers cause biggest pollution in India. Though the truth cannot be substantiated by fact, does it need to? Another such pollutant are the wafts of incense burning from pagan prayer places in houses as well as temples of native majoritarian religion. This intensely sweet aroma not only pollutes the air but it also , indiscriminately if I may add, forces itself into noses secular people who may not be on board with celebrating the festivals. This may have negative impact on psyche of minorities and they may feel that such incense burning during festival is an imposition of majority religion. I suggest to file a PIL that will ban incense burning during all such festivals and limit the incense burning during non-festival days. Incense burning in non-native, minority worshiping places should obviously be excluded from this ban to ensure the spirit of secularism is maintained.
The Rangoli – No, not the long running TV program on Doordarshan (Sunday morning at 7:30 am!) but the drawings of Rangoli during festivals. Usually Rangoli is manufactured using dry charcoal etc. (Rangoli is made using non-dry charcoal material as well but let’s ignore that for now) This dry charcoal obviously causes pollution. And the designs usually drawn during majoritarian festivals are very un-secular in nature. Per Sagarika Ghosh (something she never said!), if a Rangoli is drawn in temple during Diwali, similar Rangoli should be drawn in Mosques and Churches. To take Sagarika’s argument further (argument she never made), since Mosques and Churches may not want to have rangoli drawn during Diwali, to ensure spirit of secularism is maintained, rangoli should be banned in temples as well. A PIL should be file to comprehensively ban the barbaric tradition of Rangoli that not only pollutes the environment but also impacts the secular fabric of our country.
Indian Sweets – To be sure, we as a secular nation should not oppose sweets. But specifically Indian sweets can be opposed. The argument is little tough here but please bear with me. Indian sweets are primarily made in ghee. Ghee, in turn, is made from milk. And milk in turn is made by cows (buffaloes should be ignored for the purposes of our objective). If cow slaughter is to be allowed and universally accepted and executed (no pun intended) in India to maintain the secular fabric of…you know what. So, Indian sweets is one of the reason the followers of majoritarian native religion opposes cow slaughter. If a PIL is filed to ban Indian sweets altogether then it will remove one (distant) impediment towards changing constitution that allows cow slaughter.
Remember, this is just the beginning. India is infested with so many festivals. And we need to go after all of them methodically, one by one.
