Harsh Mander: Will the India of ‘messy diversity’ and shared togetherness be lost in time?

It was the evening before Diwali. Dusk was just falling. A friend, returning from his evening walk, saw a man lighting firecrackers with his young son. On an impulse, he walked up to the man and quietly said to him, “Don’t you think you should worry more about your son’s health? Why don’t you celebrate Diwali just with lamps and sweets?” The man snapped back, “You should first tell Muslims to stop praying five times a day.”

Diwali, for me, was from childhood an iridescent festival of light and cheer in which neighbours and friends of every faith and identity joined. I cannot brook its rapid transformation in recent years into a locus of Hindu resentment. It is now propagated as a festival that can legitimately be celebrated exclusively by Hindus, and in ways they choose including electric lights and fireworks. And the festivals must be vigilantly guarded from both participation of and “interference” from outsiders, including people of other faiths, governments and courts.

Many family and friends’ WhatsApp groups contain belligerent posts critical of greetings of “Diwali Mubarak”. Mubarak, they admonish, is an Urdu word. Using it for a Diwali greeting implies a sly bid to “Abrahamise” (sic.) the Hindu faith. Hindus must...

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