11-13-2007, 08:47 PM
Deepavali is more than a festival
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Deepavali is the Festival of Light celebrated by Indian religious traditions -- Vedic, Jain and Sikh. Multi-level mythologies and history have made the festival cherished in the memories and lives of the billion-strong Indian communities. It is the Festival of Light, and light symbolizes many things positive, including primarily freedom.
  Swami Vivekananda, the great Hindu savant, said that freedom is the first condition of life. And the light of Deepavali is also the light of freedom -- freedom from control, freedom from tyranny and freedom from all that artificially divides humanity.
  Hindu nationalists, after all, were proclaiming the unity of the human race from Himalayan peaks while Europe was besieged with racial theories and conflicts. As early as 1910 Sri Aurobindo pointed out that race is a pseudo-scientific category. Veer Savarkar declared in the 1920s that humanity is one from pole to pole and all other divisions are manmade and artificial. Why talk about race during Deepavali?
  During the expansion of European colonialism, colonial "scholars" -- who were often missionaries or administrators -- tried to present the history of the people of continents like Asia, Africa and the Americas. They derived the lineage of these people from Ham, a son of the Biblical figure Noah. Why Ham? Because Noah cursed him and his descendents with servitude to the descendants of Noah's other two sons.
  This mythology of Genesis was transformed into the history of the people whose continents the Europeans colonized. The curse of Noah justified slavery. Even after the abolition of slavery, it made Europeans feel good about the civilizing mission they were to take up among the dark-skinned races of the world.
  In India a variant of this Hamitic myth set the dark-skinned Dravidians beneath the fair- skinned Aryan invaders (who were descendants of Shem or Japheth as per the guesses of the researcher concerned). Soon the demons of Hindu mythologies became Dravidians and the Gods Aryans. Political movements which applied racial categories to social inequalities sprouted.
  For the colonial administrators these movements were blessings in disguise, and they encouraged these social divides to counter the rising tide of the anti-colonial freedom movement in India. In the process the beautiful cultural traditions of India became victims of racial interpretations. Deepavali is one such.
  In South India the Dravidian supremacist movement was run by E. V. Ramasami, a disgruntled Congressman. He declared that Narakasura -- a demon whose death we celebrate in Deepavali -- was Dravidian and that he was killed by deceit by Aryan invaders. So he declared that Deepavali should be a day of mourning for Tamils.
  It is interesting to note that even though his followers today form the ruling party and Dravidian ideology -- which is racism camouflaged as social justice -- is the ideology of the ruling party in Tamil Nadu, people have rejected this racial interpretation of the Deepavali mythology. Tamil Nadu is full of children bursting crackers and people exchanging sweets on the day of Deepavali -- virtually indistinguishable from the rest of India.
  Deepavali thus symbolizes in Tamil Nadu the victory of Tamil culture, which is part of Indian culture, against racist propaganda. To feel the significance of this cultural victory over racist narrative one has only to look at Rwanda, where a parallel racist divide of the people by Hamitic myth-turned-history resulted in genocide and massacres and wars among people of the same stock and culture who were made to believe that they were alien races.
  The mythology of Deepavali that is very prevalent in the South is the killing of Narakasura, a demon born when Vishnu rescued Earth from chaos. Narakasura, though born of divine parents, had an uncontrollable urge to conquer the entire universe. He imprisoned women. In the end he was met in battle by Vishnu, who was aided by an incarnation of Mother Earth. Ultimately he was killed not by Vishnu but by Mother Earth. As he was dying he realized his wrongs and requested that his death be celebrated as the Festival of Light.
  Are not we too children of Earth carrying the divinity within and yet an uncontrollable urge to control all nature? And have not our technologies, born out of an urge to control nature, created a serious imbalance between yin and yang and relegated the feminine into dungeons of our unconscious? Then will not Gaia -- Mother Earth -- remove our species on her onward march if we do not make our presiding paradigms sustainable? The mythology of Deepavali has layers and layers of meaning and we humans as a species would do well to ponder over it.
  Then as we celebrate Deepavali we cannot forget the kind of sacrifices associated with it. One such is that of Bhai Mani Singh of the Sikh tradition who in 1737 sacrificed his life for the right to celebrate Deepavali in the Golden Temple (Harmandir) of Punjab. He was cut limb by limb and tortured for his "offense" in organizing the Festival of Light. To this day Sikhs remember his sacrifice as they light the lamps in Gurudwaras.
  Less well known is the sacrifice indentured laborers of Indian origin underwent in Africa for their right to celebrate Deepavali. Two historians, Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, in their book titled "Inside Indenture" revealed how indentured Indian laborers who went to Africa in the 1860s to work in the sugarcane fields relentlessly fought for their right to celebrate Deepavali -- which the colonial authorities refused. At last they won their right to celebrate the festival in 1907.
  Says Desai: "Being the 100th year of celebrations, we need to recognize and pay homage to those indentured laborers and many other Hindus who sacrificed a great deal to convince the white colonial authorities that Hinduism was a religion and that they had a right to celebrate Deepavali."
  Thus in South Africa Deepavali became a symbolic clarion call for freedom and end to discrimination that anticipated the arrival of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. Note that it also gives the lie to the recent claims of Western Indologists -- high priests of a subject that has undeniable colonial roots -- that Hinduism itself is an artificial creation of colonialism. As this fight for the Festival of Light by indentured Indian laborers shows, Hinduism is not a colonial construction, but a natural and spontaneous manifestation of a collective expression of the Indian religious heritage.
  Deepavali is thus more than just a festival. It is an expression in light divine of a great civilization that emphasizes the oneness and divinity of not just humanity but of all existence, in this age of strife and terror.
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Deepavali is the Festival of Light celebrated by Indian religious traditions -- Vedic, Jain and Sikh. Multi-level mythologies and history have made the festival cherished in the memories and lives of the billion-strong Indian communities. It is the Festival of Light, and light symbolizes many things positive, including primarily freedom.
  Swami Vivekananda, the great Hindu savant, said that freedom is the first condition of life. And the light of Deepavali is also the light of freedom -- freedom from control, freedom from tyranny and freedom from all that artificially divides humanity.
  Hindu nationalists, after all, were proclaiming the unity of the human race from Himalayan peaks while Europe was besieged with racial theories and conflicts. As early as 1910 Sri Aurobindo pointed out that race is a pseudo-scientific category. Veer Savarkar declared in the 1920s that humanity is one from pole to pole and all other divisions are manmade and artificial. Why talk about race during Deepavali?
  During the expansion of European colonialism, colonial "scholars" -- who were often missionaries or administrators -- tried to present the history of the people of continents like Asia, Africa and the Americas. They derived the lineage of these people from Ham, a son of the Biblical figure Noah. Why Ham? Because Noah cursed him and his descendents with servitude to the descendants of Noah's other two sons.
  This mythology of Genesis was transformed into the history of the people whose continents the Europeans colonized. The curse of Noah justified slavery. Even after the abolition of slavery, it made Europeans feel good about the civilizing mission they were to take up among the dark-skinned races of the world.
  In India a variant of this Hamitic myth set the dark-skinned Dravidians beneath the fair- skinned Aryan invaders (who were descendants of Shem or Japheth as per the guesses of the researcher concerned). Soon the demons of Hindu mythologies became Dravidians and the Gods Aryans. Political movements which applied racial categories to social inequalities sprouted.
  For the colonial administrators these movements were blessings in disguise, and they encouraged these social divides to counter the rising tide of the anti-colonial freedom movement in India. In the process the beautiful cultural traditions of India became victims of racial interpretations. Deepavali is one such.
  In South India the Dravidian supremacist movement was run by E. V. Ramasami, a disgruntled Congressman. He declared that Narakasura -- a demon whose death we celebrate in Deepavali -- was Dravidian and that he was killed by deceit by Aryan invaders. So he declared that Deepavali should be a day of mourning for Tamils.
  It is interesting to note that even though his followers today form the ruling party and Dravidian ideology -- which is racism camouflaged as social justice -- is the ideology of the ruling party in Tamil Nadu, people have rejected this racial interpretation of the Deepavali mythology. Tamil Nadu is full of children bursting crackers and people exchanging sweets on the day of Deepavali -- virtually indistinguishable from the rest of India.
  Deepavali thus symbolizes in Tamil Nadu the victory of Tamil culture, which is part of Indian culture, against racist propaganda. To feel the significance of this cultural victory over racist narrative one has only to look at Rwanda, where a parallel racist divide of the people by Hamitic myth-turned-history resulted in genocide and massacres and wars among people of the same stock and culture who were made to believe that they were alien races.
  The mythology of Deepavali that is very prevalent in the South is the killing of Narakasura, a demon born when Vishnu rescued Earth from chaos. Narakasura, though born of divine parents, had an uncontrollable urge to conquer the entire universe. He imprisoned women. In the end he was met in battle by Vishnu, who was aided by an incarnation of Mother Earth. Ultimately he was killed not by Vishnu but by Mother Earth. As he was dying he realized his wrongs and requested that his death be celebrated as the Festival of Light.
  Are not we too children of Earth carrying the divinity within and yet an uncontrollable urge to control all nature? And have not our technologies, born out of an urge to control nature, created a serious imbalance between yin and yang and relegated the feminine into dungeons of our unconscious? Then will not Gaia -- Mother Earth -- remove our species on her onward march if we do not make our presiding paradigms sustainable? The mythology of Deepavali has layers and layers of meaning and we humans as a species would do well to ponder over it.
  Then as we celebrate Deepavali we cannot forget the kind of sacrifices associated with it. One such is that of Bhai Mani Singh of the Sikh tradition who in 1737 sacrificed his life for the right to celebrate Deepavali in the Golden Temple (Harmandir) of Punjab. He was cut limb by limb and tortured for his "offense" in organizing the Festival of Light. To this day Sikhs remember his sacrifice as they light the lamps in Gurudwaras.
  Less well known is the sacrifice indentured laborers of Indian origin underwent in Africa for their right to celebrate Deepavali. Two historians, Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, in their book titled "Inside Indenture" revealed how indentured Indian laborers who went to Africa in the 1860s to work in the sugarcane fields relentlessly fought for their right to celebrate Deepavali -- which the colonial authorities refused. At last they won their right to celebrate the festival in 1907.
  Says Desai: "Being the 100th year of celebrations, we need to recognize and pay homage to those indentured laborers and many other Hindus who sacrificed a great deal to convince the white colonial authorities that Hinduism was a religion and that they had a right to celebrate Deepavali."
  Thus in South Africa Deepavali became a symbolic clarion call for freedom and end to discrimination that anticipated the arrival of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. Note that it also gives the lie to the recent claims of Western Indologists -- high priests of a subject that has undeniable colonial roots -- that Hinduism itself is an artificial creation of colonialism. As this fight for the Festival of Light by indentured Indian laborers shows, Hinduism is not a colonial construction, but a natural and spontaneous manifestation of a collective expression of the Indian religious heritage.
  Deepavali is thus more than just a festival. It is an expression in light divine of a great civilization that emphasizes the oneness and divinity of not just humanity but of all existence, in this age of strife and terror.
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