The Beginning of the End

 As and when the Padwa day, the fourth day of the Diwali festival dawns, without fail, I always feel a twinge, a pang. There are a number of reasons why. 

First and foremost, there is a sense of sadness because the Padwa heralds the beginning of the end of Diwali. Just a day more, and then a year long wait again, right? Willy-nilly, during Diwali, meet-n-greet has to happen. There hence is a pleasant sense of togetherness, of euphoria. Hence this 'just a day more' feel. 

The day is a little depressing also because it shows two contradictory, in fact, mutually exclusive attitudes to the  Vaidic consciousness, the second one aggravating the anti-Aryans feel, currently seethingly dominant.

Let us begin with the positive one as is my wont. On this day is celebrated the Gowardhan Puja. There is often an 'annakot', a mount/mound of food, signifying Lord Vishnu in his Krishanavtar saving the cowherds from the excessive rains and floods. The deity as a young lad lifts an entire mountain to save the lives and livelihoods of the common man. 

Exactly opposite is the story of the Bali Pratipada. Here, too, Lord Vishnu is a young lad, Wamana, the 'batu'. He is granted the three feet strong space by the generous and good King Bali whom he sends to the Patal Loka through trickery. Bali is granted the boon that he could annually meet his citizens. Hence the Bali Pratipada!

The narrative that is currently dominant is that of the trickster Batu Wamana, signifying the Aryans, to be specific the Vaidic believers, especially the Brahmins, being deceitful, unjust and pilfering the rights of the other, the lower castes.

Actually, both the myths relate to Lord Vishnu, and yet the narratives created are so vastly different. The Gowardhan Puja is conveniently forgotten, despite its elevating feel, both figuratively and literally, too! 

In my opinion, such convenient cherry picking kind of 're-search'ed narrativisation is indeed depressing because it unnecessarily creates bad blood between castes, and thereby in the society itself.  Honestly, at times, the anti-Aryan feelings, consciously  stoked, remind of the Holocaust rhetoric against Jews wherein jealousy masqueraded as societal justice led to pathetic (in all senses of this term) genocide!

Enough of such interpretation of the Padwa fest in the public arena. In the private space, it is a lovely tribute to the marital bond, which, too, is fraying at the edges these days. Hence this urgent need to re-imagine its original sense by celebrating it!

Pratima@ Recently I read another such example of cherry picking as 're-search'. There was this lady who was vehemently arguing that Lokmanya Tilak was anti-lower castes! Poor Tilak! During his lifetime, he was reviled for giving a status and a weightage to the non-Brahmins. He was often criticised contemporaneously as the leader of the lower castes and the downtrodden!

Similarly, in the educational field, he told his own son to take up any profession (the example he gave was that of a cobbler), but excel in it. The re-search article I refer to in the first paragraph of the conclusion of our blog talks of the great leader as thwarting, opposing the education of the non-Brahmins so that they continue in to typical traditional jobs/roles! 

Actually, currently, the white collar jobs are mostly occupied by the non-Brahmins, while the Brahmins are taking up the role of stockists and re-distributors, hardly creative by any strech of imagination. Many Brahmin women are caterers, small time to the Chitale Bandhu types. 

That was what Tilak was presciently thinking, right in the initial stages of the independence struggle. Who cares for facts and scholarly integrity though? What matters is rubbing a point in, however dishonest and unjust!