I remember that a few years ago, there was a not-so-subtle move by the freshly anointed BJP government to declare December 25 as Good Governance Day in honour of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. People were instructed to come to work and effectively ignore the other famous birthday boy.
Before you could say Subtle Bihari, India was up in arms. Christians or non-Christians, all of us love our kitschy Christmas celebrations, complete with cotton-wool bearded creepy Santas, mawa plum cake, gota-decorated trees, and the licence to lurk outside churches and (maybe) get to kiss pretty girls on both cheeks.
There have been small communal skirmishes when Holi comes up during Ramzan—Surf Excel even made a rather nice ad about a small girl getting herself drenched with colour to protect an even smaller Muslim boy, so he can reach the mosque without getting colour on his clothes— but the next biggest tussle for the ownership of meaningful dates happens on October 31.
Indira Gandhi was assassinated on this date in New Delhi in 1984. Almost 100 years before that, in 1875, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was born on the same date in Nadiad, Gujarat. Back in the day when the Congress was calling the shots, pictures of all the leaders, sombre and crisp in white, cotton kurta-pyjamas or saris, paying homage to the slain leader would dominate the front page. Now, we see images of the entire BJP pantheon flagging off Unity runs, and the prime minister laying flowers at the feet of the Patel statue that was built at a cost of Rs2,989 crore, purportedly in the virtuous cause of celebrating the legacy of the Iron Man of India (but perhaps also in the not-so-virtuous cause of obliterating the memory of Mrs Gandhi’s ‘sacrifice’.)
The Congress deals with this blatant appropriation of both the date as well as of Sardar Patel, who despised the RSS and was a staunch Congressman, by saying that the BJP has no leaders of stature of its own and therefore has to appropriate the Congress’s. But this is just a case of making nimbu-pani because life served you nimbus.
Illustration: Bhaskaran
This year, another event of major significance happened on October 31—Jammu and Kashmir ceased to be a state and was bifurcated into the Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. Surely this is an event of major import and Kashmiris everywhere will probably want their children to remember the date.
But I think they are all fighting a losing battle. Because India—or rather rich and upper middle class India, which is all that seems to matter to our politicians nowadays—voted NOTA on all these contenders for ownership of October 31. Today, thanks to social media connectivity, rampant wannabe-ness and the supremacy of American popular culture, October 31 belongs, not to Mrs Gandhi or to Sardar Patel or to the newly birthed UTs, but only to Halloween.
Pint-sized spooks, bhoots, zombies and witches have been ringing my doorbell all night, screaming trick or treat. Their fake American accents stirred up the slumbering Sri Ram Sena bhakt that I did not know I was housing inside my pseudo-liberal soul. So I gave them a snarky lecture on Indian culture and booted them out empty-handed.
“Come around for Lohri or Eidi, and maybe I’ll give you something,” I said, as I banged the door shut in their faces.
“What’s that?” I heard them whisper to each other.
“Ask your parents!” I yelled. “Or, at least come back next year dressed as a desi monster—perhaps a random politician!”
“Mean auntie! Cheap auntie!” They chorused loudly and scampered away.
Yeah.
Forget Rashtriya Sankalp Diwas or Rashtriya Ekta Diwas, Happy Halloween, everyone.