The festival of lights is back with a bang! With gleam of diyas and lots of delicious mithais to eat, Deepawali is celebrated with full flare all over the country. And just as this festival is back, so is the controversy surrounding the use of crackers and the amount of pollution generated through it.
Let me tell you I am not a big fan of crackers myself and stopped bursting them way back but I don’t quite understand why suddenly there is so much hype around the use of them! To all those, who claim that burning crackers is responsible for the increasing pollution in cities, I just want to ask one question, isn’t it a hypocrisy of the highest level?
I can give you tons of examples which cause more pollution than a bursting Rassi bomb! Take a look around you, are you doing any good to the society by travelling in your four wheelers to office everyday!? You can use the public transport, that way you will save the fuel as well as cause less pollution on road, but you won’t do that and instead oppose the use of firecrackers just because you don’t like them personally, isn’t it? Do you have the guts to stop asking the factories from causing pollution when they emit harmful gases in the environment which leads to hazardous diseases? No! But you would like to stop a poor man’s child from lighting an Anar this weekend just because you ‘care’ for the environment!
I’d give you an example of what happened to me today. I was buying mithais for Diwali and suddenly a poor child came and started asking for money to a lady standing nearby.
He said to her, “Mayi, kuch paise de do, patakhe phodne hai Diwali pe.” To which, that lady said, “Patakhe phodna gandi baat hai. Ham khud nahi phodte!” See? Just because you don’t like crackers, what gives you the right to question other’s choice? He might not be the wealthiest person in the world but for him when he lights a Phuljadi or Chakri, he finds happiness in that! But sadly, most people don’t want to understand all this.
Then there is the other argument put forward. I’ve seen posts being shared on various social media platforms about how the crackers cause noise pollution and are harmful for the animals. Noise Pollution, really? Diwali is just celebrated for one day but what about the ‘Noise’ pollution done by you everyday when you honk your cars even while passing by a Hospital where it is strictly mentioned not to do so! Is that not noise pollution!?
And as for as the animals go, you can ask people to be ‘Safe’ while bursting crackers. Why should they stop entirely? You can spread the message of being safe while bursting your crackers, why do you want to stop bursting them altogether?
And while all this is going one, I strongly feel this is also an agenda of the Pseudo-secular elitists of our nation who seemed to have found everything wrong with Hindu traditions and are spreading the messages of ‘Noiseless Diwali’ and ‘Waterless Holi’ every time we have these festivals. I want to ask those people, how many of them have supported the slogan ‘Bloodless Eid’ or ‘Treeless Christmas’? I don’t support them and I would never do that, but I want to ask these guys that if you are so ‘environment friendly’ and ‘animal lovers’, why do you not condemn the killing of hundreds of Goats on ‘BakraEid’ or the cutting of thousands of trees for ‘Christmas celebrations’?
I just want to stress on the fact that there shouldn’t be selective outrage and if questions are being asked about one religion, then the other religions should be seen with the same mindset by the ‘liberal class’. I respect all religions and I’m nowhere spreading the idea mentioned above but it is high-time people realize that enough is enough and just let the festivals be celebrated as they have been all these years.
I wish you all a very Happy Diwali and a happy new year!
PS – Once again, I do not want to endorse the ideas mentioned above and I’m using those just to show the hypocrisy of the people who question the use of firecrackers on Diwali.
