Asian Angle | India or China, who invented gunpowder? Diwali’s Hindu haze and a weird debate
“What’s Diwali for children without crackers? … A Diwali when they can breathe”
In an India increasingly polarised along religious lines, with a triumphalist Hindu majoritarianism unleashed by the powers that be, everything seems to take on a communal colour these days. But even those reconciled to this sad reality were a bit taken aback when a Supreme Court ruling banning the sale of firecrackers during next week’s Diwali festival caused a firestorm of protest to erupt on communal lines.
Delhi has one of the world’s worst air quality records, with the winter months becoming particularly unbreathable. Fog descends as temperatures drop, trapping the smoke rising from cars, buses, trucks, factories and charcoal braziers on the pavement. The result is a thick impenetrable smog that chokes lungs, corrodes throats and impairs visibility.
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During Diwali – the Hindu Festival of Lights – hundreds of thousands of firecrackers are lit, spewing clouds of smoke and ash into the air, deafening eardrums and exacerbating the pollution crisis.
For years environmentalists and parents of asthmatic children have clamoured for a ban, and finally this year, the Supreme Court granted it.
The resultant uproar has been astonishing. Hindu chauvinists declared the court decision an assault on tradition and hurtful towards their own religious sentiments. Some turned belligerent, echoing the plaintive narrative that Hindus are singled out for discrimination.
