Kochi: Kerala’s Tourism and Public Works Minister P A Muhammad Riyas on Tuesday challenged the Kerala unit of the BJP to make its stand clear after the RSS mouthpiece ‘Organiser’ published an editorial questioning ‘Christmas-New Year’ celebrations.
"Will those who rejected the Vichara Dhara, be prepared to reject Mohan Bhagwat's stand in the cover story of the Organiser," the CPM leader asked at a press conference in Kochi.
Riyas was referring to the remarks by BJP leader M T Ramesh, who said certain views in the Vichara Dhara (Bunch of Thoughts), a compilation of the speeches by RSS ideologue M S Golwalkar, were irrelevant now as they were made in the 1940s and 50s.
Ramesh's comment was a response to Riyas asking if the BJP dared to reject the views in Vichara Dhara which targetted Christians.
The discourse on Vichara Dhara and the Organiser was the outcome of the BJP’s aggressive outreach to woo the Christian community in Kerala. BJP leaders visited the houses of Christians on Easter. The party’s move to induct Christian leaders from other parties is also viewed as a part of the strategy to make inroads into the minority vote bank.
Both the ruling CPM and opposition Congress have criticised the BJP, reminding Christians of the saffron party’s approach to the community in the past.
Riyas wanted to keep the question to the BJP alive as he addressed the media with a copy of the Organiser article. He also said that Ramesh’s statement on Vichara Dhara has created a rift in BJP. “(Ramesh’s) response amounted to rubbishing Vichara Dhara," he said.
The article referred to by Riyas appeared in the January issue of Organiser. The article authored by Organiser’s editor Prafulla Ketkar and titled 'Disastrous Celebrations about Christmas and New Year' was a critique of the celebrations following the market interests of the Western world.
The editorial reads: “Come midnight of December 31, everywhere one would see pompous celebrations of the coming New Year. Markets lit up right from Christmas Eve, attracting consumers with various discount schemes. Travel agencies advertise their packages for tourist destinations. Electronic media houses broadcast live celebrations starting from Australia with squandering firecracker shows. Wining and dining on New Year’s night have become a culture, and hoteliers take advantage to extract this business opportunity. Why do we celebrate this as a New Year? What is the cultural or environmental significance behind it? Is humanity doing so for ages with some scientific thinking? These and many other questions emerge while watching these celebrations….
“Younger generations would be surprised to know that celebrating January 1 is a very recent phenomenon. During the Roman period, Christmas and the New Year celebration must have been a family affair with some religious significance. Later, European colonisation entirely distorted that spirit. The mindless combination of individual materialism and capitalist profit-making killed the entire essence of festivity. Often this is associated with the Americanisation of Christmas. The influence of Coca-Cola on the iconography of Santa Claus, an imaginary character, is well known. Naturally, the loving and gifting Santa does not match the original historical personality of St Nicholas. Boxing Day, gifting, and shopping are the gimmicks strongly associated with the brands and marketing techniques, further flourishing with the globalised market economy. Hence, the market forces have yet to fund any systematic study of these Church-created and capitalism-sponsored festivities on environmental degradation. Protestant ethics is the fundamental ethical spirit behind capitalism, as Max
Weber argued, the ‘pagan festivals’ are freely targeted in the name of environmentalism.
The article mentions various New Year celebrations in India. “Adding a few more festivals or iconic characters to such enormous diversity does not belittle the Bharatiya culture. The core issues are the universal and colonial imposition of Anglo-Saxon values through the Church and its proselytising tendencies. For the same reasons, countries like Israel and, to some extent, China have systematically eschewed the celebrations of these European-American festivities and reinforced their sense of distinct identity through national festivals. While blindly imitating and adopting environmentally disastrous practices, we must mull over the roots, philosophy and historicity of those celebrations and their impact on our culture and environment,” it states.