During my visit, at dinner time, we were seated as the maid was laying the table. She brought in the dishes and then I caught her exchanging glances with aunty and vigorously shaking her head. At that point aunty got up and brought in the egg curry and placed it at one end of the table. As we were eating I noticed everyone had politely declined the egg curry. I could no longer restrain myself and asked my friend what the matter was.
After much cajoling my friend told me that eggs were not cooked or consumed in their household during the auspicious Navratri period. The maid had refused to risk Gods wrath by touching them so aunty had made the egg curry herself. I had grown up in a home where all days were considered equal and was embarrassed that I had unwittingly inconvenienced her with a moral dilemma. I asked aunty why she had risked rotting in hell and not simply refused to serve the dish. Her answer is vividly stuck in my memory. She said, ” I figured that God would understand that there is no malicious intent in feeding a child what she has innocently requested.”
The other incident goes further back and is from early childhood. We were new in Canada where dad was pursuing his doctorate. Christmas was approaching and his professor asked if we would be celebrating it. Dad said that though we children had heard about it from friends and were very excited, he wasn’t so sure as he was not familiar with the local customs. Moreover, with dad’s stipend being our only source of income, we were already on a shoe string budget.
Two days before Christmas the bell rang and when mum opened the door there was no one around, just a beautiful conifer and a huge box. The gift wrapped box contained Christmas tree ornaments and a note, ‘ Apart from this all you need is a little Christmas spirit.’ We enthusiastically decorated the tree and celebrated the festival that year and every year that followed. Dad strongly suspected who had gifted the tree but his professor never owned up claiming it to be a Christmas miracle. In any case, the ‘spirit’ outlasted our five year stay in an alien land and we continued to commemorate the day even after returning to India, albeit, without the tree and the turkey.
Though these incidents appear unrelated the underlying sentiment is the same. Both display the inherent character of mature individuals and the type of society they create, the ability to take people along not by influencing their thoughts but by accepting their beliefs. The incidents make a case for magnanimity of heart, something which seems to be in short supply in present times. These incidents become more significant now when laws which restrict personal freedom are being enforced. It is just as wrong for the state to appease minorities to gain votes as it is to impose ideals from a mythic past to favour majority sentiment and impinge on the rights of others.
Banning books, films , clothes and edibles are attempts by political parties to promote separatism. It could be dismissed as a minor inconvenience, a wrinkle in the social fabric of a country as vast and diverse as India. It would not cause concern had Adolf Hitler not uttered these infamous words, ” The best way to take control of a people and to control them utterly is to take away a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed. ” Are we, unwittingly traversing the same path ?
In recent times, the ‘ secular’ word has been tossed around like never before. It has been redefined and distorted, misused and misinterpreted. The fact of the matter is secularism is a difficult goal but we don’t have to achieve it. We just need to be average, decent humans and respect each other. Much before the word was coined and given a political hue Samrat Ashoka had preached it , “One must not exalt one’s creed discrediting and degrading others. One must, on the contrary, render to other creeds the honour befitting them.”
We, the people, need to be more accommodative and pragmatic about social customs and personal choices. It takes just a little understanding to accept someone and excuse their religious beliefs or lack of them. It takes just a little warmth to welcome a complete outsider to holy celebrations . All those years ago with a single act of kindness the professor had introduced us to the Christmas spirit and in her own simple way, aunty had made a stronger statement than Voltaire, the French Philosopher who had said, “I may not agree with what you say, but to your death I will defend your right to say it.”
( published in the Hindu Sunday magazine on 2/1/2016)