Like any syncretic cooperative compass of festivity, the Durga-Pooja has also transformed over the years and has grown into more than a matter of faith! This year as earlier, Muslims, and other minority communities have actively participated and contributed to the merriments and heralded India’s unique communal congruence!        

 Deoria, Uttar Pradesh 

In the city of sugarcane farmers and sugar-mills, a sweet instance of communal brotherhood has overpowered the uprising hate-wave around the east of Uttar-Pradesh! There is a ritual of ‘Kanya-puja’ during Navratri and each year the religious heads or the committee organises a grand feast for small young girls who have not reached the stage of puberty! [Feminists have questioned this practice that is still observed in many parts, however.] Young girls are adorned, celebrated and worshipped in between the early days of Navratri! 

In the Bhujouli colony of district Deoria a Muslim man has presented an exquisite example of shared fraternity! Breaking the stereotypical structure, he has taken the charge of Kanya-pooja and offered scrumptious Thali & flamboyant Uphar (gifts) to 1500 girls.   

देवरिया- नवरात्रि पर हिंदू-मुस्लिम एकता की दिखी झलक,मुस्लिम युवक ने 1500 कन्याओं को कराया भोजन,जन सहयोग से सभी कन्याओं को गिफ्ट भी दिया,देवरिया के भुजौली कॉलोनी में हुआ कार्यक्रम.#Deoria pic.twitter.com/dCimLlGrq8

— भारत समाचार | Bharat Samachar (@bstvlive) October 23, 2023

This Muslim man has proved that the love and respect for the daughters must not be alienated on the name of religion! The daughters are ‘Lakshmi’ for the Hindu community and ‘Rehmat’ for the Muslim believers!

Mumbai, Maharashtra

By the same token, following the Gujarati tradition of vivacious, ecstatic and jovial Garba nights, the city of dreams has also witnessed several beautiful accounts of communal harmony! A post on the Instagram handle of singer Salim Merchant has widely grabbed the ogles of netizens!  In the posted video, three Muslim singers Salim-Merchant, Osman Mir and Aamir Mir are leading the stage while a throng of people is seen dancing and rejoicing on the beats of Maari Maavdi! 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Salim Merchant (@salimmerchant)

Bollywood and the creative arena are known to diminish borders of prejudice! Art has no religion and when the artist picks the path of faith, religion turns into a potion of love, empathy and concord!   

Dantewada, Chhattisgarh 

Dantewada, mostly identified as the tight-spot of political hurricanes, has also perceived a stunning example of religious synchronization!  According to the report of Speed News Desk a Muslim family has ignited seven lamps on the names of seven family-members inside the Maa Danteshawari temple. Sweety Alam, Manan Miraz Hussain, Zahida Khatun, Soham Kabir, Sheikh Sahid, Shakeel Ahmad and Salim Raza Usmani were going through a perilous phase of a serious disease when they promised to kindle Ghee-lamps. Later, they recovered and completed the promise during the blessed days of Navratri!   

Both religions have inspired the other one and the treasured devout values in order to hold the heirloom of syncretistic past!  This family is another example of the intertwined faith and mutual enlightening ethics!  

 Kolkata, West Bengal 

In the similar row the city of joy, Kolkata has presented a quite unique example of beading faith into a powerful tool to change social mathematics. As per a report of FII a Pujo Pandal is breaking the menstruation taboos via women-oriented themes and revolutionary sculptures. The Pujo is the most imperative festival of West Bengal and this initiative to establish a comforting positive atmosphere for the women is pathbreaking and truly inspirational! 

In our society, a ‘Ritumati’ woman is considered profane, someone who can’t touch the religious sculpture or participate in the ceremonies. There is a lot of social stigma and discernment around menstruation. This art of empowering women by combining the crucial question of exclusion with spirituality has set an astounding landmark of equality! 

New Delhi – The Urdu Ramayan 

The Jashn-e-Rekhta, an annual celebration of Urdu literature, has organised an ‘Urdu-Ramayan’ drama to celebrate the combined cultural bonds! The Hindu scriptures in Urdu language are not a new thing. In the previous records of this beautiful Indian language there exists a splendid history of unrestricted morals. 

This innovation must be seen as a modest and creative revolt against the pro-Hindutva politics of labelling the Urdu language. The easy to understand, friendly dialogues and the mesmeric tone of the Urdu Ram Kahani not only adds a magical charisma to the epic but also boons Urdu as a ‘Dilfareb Hindustani Zaban’ (Striking Indian Language).

Precisely, this year the Durga-Pooja celebrations have established the humane virtues over typecasts, politics of abhorrence and discrimination! These tales of harmony have unbolted the empathy, love & care among common people. It’s true that the wonder of this Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb is founded on the evergreen paradigm of collective pain and happiness!  

Related:

Everyday Harmony: Banners Asserting Fraternity & Sisterhood Plaster Navi Mumbai Streets

Everyday Harmony: Muslim Man Risks Life To Save A Hindu Girl From Drowning In Madhya Pradesh

Love & Harmony over Hate: Int’l Day to Counter Hate speech, CJP’s unique efforts

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The much-awaited Draft Political Resolution (PDR) of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is out. This is the one approved by the Central Committee in its Kolkota meeting by a majority vote. On first reading of this DPR, several questions arose in my mind. Let us discuss them one by one.
 
There are no differences in assessment of prevailing political situation in the country. What I could not understand is much more the larger question played out in public concerning the alleged differences about an alliance with the Congress. The question is to have or to have not such alliance.
 
Columnist Ajay Ashirwad Mahaprashasta in his article on The Wire,who gave a detailed presentation about the so called differences between the alleged two camps in CPI(M) felt that there is nothing much of differences except semantics.
 
What one can gather from the media is this. The two drafts that were presented at the Kolkata central committee meeting had two different tactical lines. One allegedly argued for alliance with the Congress (minority resolution) while the other argued against it (majority resolution). If we are to believe what was published on The Wire, we can conclude that there was a guided misinformation campaign against the Sitaram Yechury camp which supported the minority resolution. It now turns out that the minority resolution presented at the central committee does not argue for overt or covert alliance with the Congress, or for that matter with any ruling class parties at any level. It only wanted an understanding with the Congress so that anti-BJP votes don’t get divided.
 
On the other hand the CC-adopted majority resolution also suggests: “(ix) In states where the main force fighting the BJP alliance is a regional party, we may have an understanding with that party even if it enters into an alliance with the Congress. In such cases, we should not project any state-level front or alliance with the Congress.” But in the fine print that is out for debate across the party this aspect of the majority line is missing. In the CC-adopted resolution there was an explicit comment that the party would confine to the limited seats where the Congress and BJP are the key contestants. Put together, these two approaches are aimed at joining hands with the Congress either directly or indirectly. Thus it is the majority resolution that batted for allying with the Congress and not the minority resolution moved by the party general secretary.
 
As per the DPR the tactics to be adopted is this. “Appropriate electoral tactics to maximize the pooling of the anti-BJP votes should be adopted based on the above tactical line.” The relevant portion from the minority resolution states, “Suitable electoral tactics should be worked out to ensure that the primary objective of ousting this RSS-BJP government and its policies is achieved while not entering into any electoral front or alliance with bourgeois-landlord parties.”
 
That means the final DPR and the one moved as minority resolution argues for the same thing. When the final DPR and the minority resolution argues for the same approach of adopting appropriate electoral tactics to maximize the pooling of anti-BJP votes, what made a section of media to make allegations against the minority resolution?
 
Here subjective factors might have been at work and the consequential adverse campaign. The most striking of this is how the media projects a fiction aimed at vilifying a section of the party. Could this happen without a section of the party leadership cozying up with the media to plant stories of vested interest is to be judged by oneself? The general refrain is that if the party accepts the above mentioned tactical line it might end up in an electoral understanding with the Congress in 2019 elections.
 
Debates in communist parties centre around hard facts rather than on hypothetical projections. If we have to discuss about the possible consequences the same is applicable to resolution adopted by the majority vote as well. More importantly, the majority resolution vocally argued for an explicit alliance with Congress in some contexts. But the organized vilification campaign applied the possible consequence principle only to one resolution and accepted the other in its letter and spirit. This is nothing but double standards.
 
When we were in the Students Federation of India (students’ wing of the party), we were taught about the dialectical approach. The basic principle of dialectical approach is to study any issue on an objective rather than subjective basis. The subjective basis, we were taught, is to look at things the way we think them to be. The objective basis is the one that exists irrespective of our whims and fancies or thoughts.
 
If we apply the same basis to the tone and tenor of the DPR as well as the discussion centered around the majority and minority resolutions that were discussed at the central committee, one could feel that the differences that have cropped up in the CPI(M) are in principle subjective rather than objective ones. When there are subjective imperatives they would obviously lead to factionalism. And if there is factionalism within the CPI(M) definitely it is an unhealthy phenomenon.
 
There has been subjectivism at work within the party for quite some time which leads to ad-hocism which in turn deflects attention from the long-term structured gainful goals towards short-term unstructured ad-hoc goals. When subjectivism takes over, one would look for one upmanship rather than the factual issue at hand.
 
If because of this subjectivism a section of the party leadership conducts an orchestrated campaign against another section it is detrimental to its standing in Indian polity as well as its desired course of revolution. It appears that a section is desirous of advancing its limited interests at the cost of the party and its standing, as is evident for the last two years ever since the former general secretary mooted the idea that BJP is merely authoritarian. This needs separate treatment in the wake of final DPR that was released for debate.
 
With a considerable part of the central committee siding with such a conclusion riddled with subjectivism, the days ahead for Left movement in India are unlikely to bring good tidings. Such subjectivist assessment of an objective situation is going to give an unbridled opportunity for the Hindutva forces that are aiming to transform India into Hindu Rashtra to commemorate centenary celebrations of 1923’s master-piece of Savarkar, i.e. Hindu Rashtra.
 
Let us windup the discussion by looking at the last possible reason for such subjectivist approach on key issues in any party. If factional feud erupts or prevails in any party it takes place with some purpose, mainly for power: say, for the post of minister, chief minister or prime minister. But the situation of CPI(M) is not akin to that. Then what could be the reason for this subjectivist feud is the main question that hangs over the minds of those who are striving to preserve the secular democratic foundations of India.
 
 

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