Not In Our Name!
Christmas Celebration with the PM is Not in Our Name!
We are in the Christmas Season: a time when we are all called to internalize and actualize the gifts of joy, love, peace, truth, justice and hope which Jesus our Saviour offers to us!
Today we also need to take legitimate pride in the fact that Christians in India have contributed significantly to the country: in the freedom struggle, as members of the Constituent Assembly, and ever since independence, in every sphere of public life particularly in the educational, medical, social, cultural and political sectors. The services of the Christian community to the poor and marginalized, the excluded and the exploited, irrespective of caste and creed, is unparalleled in the nation today. This fact has been duly and consistently acknowledged by citizens from all walks of life.
However, in the recent past, particularly since 2014, Christians in India have been victims of continued attacks and vilification from members of the ruling regime, all over the country. Christians and Christian schools and institutions have been hounded and harassed, their places of worship destroyed, they have been denied their ordinary rights as citizens and been subject to denigration and demonization. The anti-conversion laws which have been put into place in BJP-ruled States are used as weapons against the fundamental right to preach, practise and propagate one’s religion. Celebrations in schools have been stopped and Christians have been arrested without any warrant and put behind bars for no offence of theirs.
Since 3rdMay 2023, the Christians of Manipur have been subject to constant attacks which still continues unabated and with apparent approval from the BJP Governments both in the State and at the Centre.
In the wake of all this, it is ironic that the Prime Minister hosted around 100 Christian representatives of different denominations on Christmas morning for a celebration. While it is certainly within his right as Prime Minister to host a reception for whomsoever, he wishes one naturally would question the intention of this reception when he has not condemned a single attack on the Christians, under his Prime Ministership. Interestingly, while he praised Jesus Christ and waxed eloquent about the services of the Christian community, he did not share remorse or empathy for the situation of the Christians in the country today
Those invited to the Christmas reception were a select group of Christians. While the invitation was from the Prime Minister, here was an opportunity for them to courteously decline the invite in the light of what has been happening to the Christians in Manipur and elsewhere.
Hence, their acceptance of this invite was not in our name!
The Christian representatives, who spoke, thanked the Prime Minister profusely for many things! The hard truth is that the Prime Minister and his Government have consistently disregarded their constitutional mandate, be it to the minorities, the Adivasis, the Dalits, the backward castes, the farmers, labourers, migrants, etc.
Hence, their gratitude to the Prime Minister was not in our name!
When these Christian representatives spoke at the reception, they were giving a tacit approval to the omission and commission of this government.
Hence, their words were not in our name!
India today fares extremely badly on every global index be it in the economic, educational, health or social sphere. By their lack of prophetic courage to highlight the grim realities in the country today, these Christian representatives publicly betrayed the Gospel of Jesus and His values of truth, justice, joy, love, dignity and peace. Through their culpable silence, they failed to uphold the values enshrined in the Constitution of India.
Hence, their silence was not in our name!
Today we the Christians of India together with conscious and committed citizens pledge to protect and promote the Constitution, Country and Citizens of India and to work with and work for all those who are victims of an unjust, insincere and authoritarian regime.
More than THREE THOUSAND INDIAN CHRISTIANS from ALL walks of life representing every section of society have ENDORSED this statement
The signatories include:
Derek O’Brien: MP, Member of Parliament - All India Trinamool Congress
M.G. Devashayam IAS - Retired
Mr. John Shilsi IPS – Retired
Dr Astrid Lobo-Gajiwala
Ms Flavia Agnes
Ms. Pamela Philipose
Ms. Minakshi Singh
Sr Patsy Khan
Fr. M.J. George SJ ( Rome)
Fr. Xavier Jeyaraj SJ (Rome)
Mr. Rajan Solomon
Fr. Anand IMS
Sr. Mudita Sodder RSCJ
Fr. Paulson Veliyannoor, CMF
Sr Molly Fernandes
Capt. Joseph C. D’Souza , Marine Consultant
( the complete list of signatories is attached additionally)
Further details from
Dr John Dayal (9811021072 and john.dayal[at]gmail.com )
Dr. Prakash Louis SJ (8210947749 and prakashlouis2010[at]gmail.com )
Fr. Cedric Prakash SJ (9824034536 and cedricprakash[at]gmail.com )
4 January 2024
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Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts
January 05, 2024
India: Christmas Celebration with the PM is Not in Our Name! (4 January 2024)
June 06, 2019
India: Jharkhand Mob lynchings, Police Apathy and Bias - excerpt from part 4 of hate crimes investigation Kunal Purohit
via FactChecker.in
[ . . .] FULL TEXT HERE: https://factchecker.in/in-jharkhand-police-apathy-and-bias-as-fatal-as-hate-crimes/
[ You can read the first story here, the second here and the third here.]
In Jharkhand, Police Apathy And Bias As Fatal As Hate Crimes
When Sakina Bibi (second from right) saw WhatsApp videos that showed her husband Chiraguddin Ansari being lynched by a mob, she asked her son to rush to the police for help. The police turned up three hours later, by when her husband was dead.
Garhwa district, Jharkhand: An April 2019 incident in western Jharkhand reminded 32-year-old Anita Minj about her own ordeal.
On April 10, four Christian tribals were lynched by a mob of Hindu villagers when they were carving a dead ox in Jurmu village of western Jharkhand’s Gumla district. The mob then dumped the four on the road outside the nearest police station, where they lay for three hours, before the police intervened. One of the four, 58-year-old Prakash Lakda, died on the street outside the police station.
The next day, the police filed a case of cow slaughter against Lakda.
About two years ago, something similar had happened to Anita’s husband, Ramesh–the 37-year-old Oraon tribal was lynched by a mob of armed Hindu villagers, allegedly because he, along with a group of other Oraon tribals, had slaughtered a bull in Barkol village of Garhwa district on August 20, 2017.
It was not the lynching alone that haunted Anita. Immediately after Ramesh was attacked, he was taken to the police station–bruised, battered and bleeding–but not to record his statement against the alleged assaulters. Instead, he was arrested under the Jharkhand Bovine Animal Prohibition of Slaughter Act, 2005, for cow slaughter.
On hearing of the assault the next morning, Anita rushed to the police station. “I saw him in the lock up. He was still bleeding–his leg had a deep gash which had exposed his bone, his fingers were broken. He could barely even speak or stand up.”
Anita’s pleas to get him medical attention were ignored. Two days later, Ramesh died in police custody.
Across Jharkhand–the second deadliest state in terms of religious hate crimes–police investigations in such crimes are often characterised by callousness and partisan behaviour. This apathy can be deadly–FactChecker found at least two cases where victims’ families alleged that delay by the police had led to the victims’ deaths.
Since 2009, Jharkhand has accounted for 14 hate crimes motivated by religion and nine deaths recorded in Hate Crime Watch, a FactChecker database that tracks such crimes. This makes it the second-deadliest state after Uttar Pradesh (23 dead), and all incidents have been reported after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won general and state elections in 2014. This reporting happened on the eve of the recent national elections, where the BJP won 11 of 14 parliamentary seats in Jharkhand.
Nationwide, over a decade to 2019, 93% of 287 hate crimes motivated by religious bias–claiming 98 lives–were reported after 2014, according to Hate Crime Watch.
Victims in Jharkhand must contend with police apathy, often made more potent when combined with religious prejudice.
[ . . .] FULL TEXT HERE: https://factchecker.in/in-jharkhand-police-apathy-and-bias-as-fatal-as-hate-crimes/
[ You can read the first story here, the second here and the third here.]
January 01, 2015
No surprises this season - Why the BJP stole Christmas (Mukul Kesavan)
The Telegraph - December 30, 2014
The BJP might regret trying to colonize the 25th of December. Not on account of remorse; subordinating things that aren't Hindu to things that are is the party's reason for being. No, the party might come to regret the petty, lying spectacle it made of itself while trying to steal Christmas.
Narendra Modi's government marked its first Christmas in office by celebrating the nativity of Madan Mohan Malaviya and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Government servants were made to work through a major gazetted holiday to help rebrand Christmas as Good Governance Day. The Central government ordered government schools to mark the day by staying open on Christmas so that students could participate in debates, plays and essay competitions on the theme of good governance.
In the face of outrage, the human resource development minister tried to brazen it out. In a series of tweets, she chided the Times of India for misreporting the government's initiative. According to her, the government had made no attempt to keep schools open over Christmas. The only activity that had been officially recommended, according to her, was an optional online essay competition that didn't require the physical presence of students in school on Christmas day.
The Times of India's reporter who had filed the story, promptly uploaded a scanned image of the original circular. This hadn't just specified a series of activities that required students to be present in schools on Christmas day, but had ordered school authorities to document their compliance by making video recordings of students participating in these activities. Since it's hard to film an online essay competition, Smriti Irani's chutzpah in demanding a retraction and apology from a newspaper for a scrupulously accurate report, was shown up for what it was, pre-emptive bluster. In full retreat, the Bharatiya Janata Party's spokespersons and its furious fellow travellers were reduced to muttering that it wasn't the Modi sarkar's fault that Jesus shared a birthday with Madan Mohan and Atal Bihari. In this, at least, they were right.
Good Governance Day was a milestone in the political career of this government though not in the way that it had intended. Its bid to steal Christmas told us something crucial about the BJP in office. The BJP, like majoritarian parties everywhere in the world, ventriloquizes the grievances of an imagined majority. Think of an alternative Gulliver's Travels, where Gulliver is systematically unpleasant to Lilliputians because he feels put upon by them and you have the BJP and its politics of resentment.
The Christmas day initiative was revealing because of its gratuitousness. It served no policy purpose. The ghar wapsi campaign to 'reconvert' Muslims and Christians had, at least, the virtue of policy cunning. It stampeded the self-appointed representatives of Christians and Muslims into asking the government to intervene to stop the loudly advertised reconversion upon which the BJP sprang its trap by asking Parliament to pass an anti-conversion bill.
But the State-sponsored commemoration of December 25 had a simpler and cruder goal: the symbolic appropriation of a day associated with Christianity. To do this the Union government, steered by the BJP, organized a parallel birthday party in honour of two men associated with Hindu nationalist politics: Malaviya and Vajpayee. The Good Governance gambit is the sort of manoeuvre that begins with the thought: "So you think you own the 25th? Well, you don't and we'll show you why." The BJP's reason for being is the assertion of Hindu hegemony, and this is most satisfactorily done by showing minorities their place. In this view of the world Christmas is a piece of calendrical real-estate crying out to be squatted on because it's a day sacred to Christians. The BJP tried to steal Christmas a) because it's programmed to crowd out minorities and b) because it could.
In its brief term in office, the Modi government, its personnel and its ideological outriders have done and said worse things, but this crabwise move to nobble Christmas is important because there is a perverse ideological purity to it. It demonstrates the Modi sarkar's determination to flex its majoritarian muscle at every available opportunity, specially in the symbolic realm.
When the BJP won a decisive majority in the general election, there was a broad difference of opinion within what passes for the 'liberal' commentariat in India. On the one hand were the secular dogmatists convinced that the dark side had won. On the other were more supple critics who made the nuanced case that in a democratic system, where political alternation was built into the system, it wasn't fair to pass judgment on a government till it had done some governing.
Even charter members of the first group had to concede that in the aftermath of a famous victory, to predict doom was to sound like disgruntled losers. The second position was, rhetorically, more reasonable at the time. Six months down the line, though, you would have to be extravagantly optimistic to believe that the responsibilities of governance might yet turn the BJP into a moderate centre-right party, committed to inclusive growth.
The power to govern unfettered by the constraints of coalition politics, has, if anything, made the BJP more feral. In the course of these six months we have had one Union minister of the government of India dividing the world into ' Ramzaadon' and ' haramzaadon' while another tried to dragoon children into jumping through sarkari hoops on Christmas Day. We have had riots in Delhi where local BJP politicians have been openly partisan. Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, she of the children-of-Ram- vs-b******s distinction, made a pro-forma apology for her statement... and was promptly sent to campaign for the BJP in Trilokpuri where communal riots had occurred just a few weeks earlier. The fact that the riots had been sparked by pitched battles between Dalits and Muslims wasn't lost on the BJP: Niranjan Jyoti is a Dalit sadhvi, tailor-made for the political polarization in that neighbourhood. We have had a BJP member of parliament, another saffron-robed sadhu, Sakshi Maharaj, make the case for elevating Nathuram Godse into the nationalist pantheon.
None of this should be the occasion for cries of startled betrayal. The empathy for Godse, the sympathy for his motives, the division of the world into Hindu virtue and non-Hindu vice, the willingness to take the 'Hindu' side in communal riots, the belief that India's religious minorities are basically Hindus who have lost their way and ought to be brought home (the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's chief, Mohan Bhagwat, defending ' ghar wapsi' charmingly referred to Christians and Muslims as " apna maal"), are hardy staples of the BJP's politics, they are its core beliefs. The fact that the BJP has aired them enthusiastically in the course of its first six months in office should surprise no one. Ideology matters: this is what the BJP was born to do. Now that it has a parliamentary majority, it can be itself in a way that wasn't possible before.
To say this is not to say I-told-you-so, but to point out that a party's beliefs matter. It is to argue that it was reasonable to anticipate that things like this would happen when Modi won his electoral majority given what we know about him and the BJP. To believe that there is some alchemy produced by the business of ruling that converts ideological viciousness into wise governance is to indulge the liberal's licence to equivocate. The point of punditry is not to seem reasonable; it is, to the extent that it's possible, to be right.
Merry Christmas and a happy, unillusioned, New Year!
The BJP might regret trying to colonize the 25th of December. Not on account of remorse; subordinating things that aren't Hindu to things that are is the party's reason for being. No, the party might come to regret the petty, lying spectacle it made of itself while trying to steal Christmas.
Narendra Modi's government marked its first Christmas in office by celebrating the nativity of Madan Mohan Malaviya and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Government servants were made to work through a major gazetted holiday to help rebrand Christmas as Good Governance Day. The Central government ordered government schools to mark the day by staying open on Christmas so that students could participate in debates, plays and essay competitions on the theme of good governance.
In the face of outrage, the human resource development minister tried to brazen it out. In a series of tweets, she chided the Times of India for misreporting the government's initiative. According to her, the government had made no attempt to keep schools open over Christmas. The only activity that had been officially recommended, according to her, was an optional online essay competition that didn't require the physical presence of students in school on Christmas day.
The Times of India's reporter who had filed the story, promptly uploaded a scanned image of the original circular. This hadn't just specified a series of activities that required students to be present in schools on Christmas day, but had ordered school authorities to document their compliance by making video recordings of students participating in these activities. Since it's hard to film an online essay competition, Smriti Irani's chutzpah in demanding a retraction and apology from a newspaper for a scrupulously accurate report, was shown up for what it was, pre-emptive bluster. In full retreat, the Bharatiya Janata Party's spokespersons and its furious fellow travellers were reduced to muttering that it wasn't the Modi sarkar's fault that Jesus shared a birthday with Madan Mohan and Atal Bihari. In this, at least, they were right.
Good Governance Day was a milestone in the political career of this government though not in the way that it had intended. Its bid to steal Christmas told us something crucial about the BJP in office. The BJP, like majoritarian parties everywhere in the world, ventriloquizes the grievances of an imagined majority. Think of an alternative Gulliver's Travels, where Gulliver is systematically unpleasant to Lilliputians because he feels put upon by them and you have the BJP and its politics of resentment.
The Christmas day initiative was revealing because of its gratuitousness. It served no policy purpose. The ghar wapsi campaign to 'reconvert' Muslims and Christians had, at least, the virtue of policy cunning. It stampeded the self-appointed representatives of Christians and Muslims into asking the government to intervene to stop the loudly advertised reconversion upon which the BJP sprang its trap by asking Parliament to pass an anti-conversion bill.
But the State-sponsored commemoration of December 25 had a simpler and cruder goal: the symbolic appropriation of a day associated with Christianity. To do this the Union government, steered by the BJP, organized a parallel birthday party in honour of two men associated with Hindu nationalist politics: Malaviya and Vajpayee. The Good Governance gambit is the sort of manoeuvre that begins with the thought: "So you think you own the 25th? Well, you don't and we'll show you why." The BJP's reason for being is the assertion of Hindu hegemony, and this is most satisfactorily done by showing minorities their place. In this view of the world Christmas is a piece of calendrical real-estate crying out to be squatted on because it's a day sacred to Christians. The BJP tried to steal Christmas a) because it's programmed to crowd out minorities and b) because it could.
In its brief term in office, the Modi government, its personnel and its ideological outriders have done and said worse things, but this crabwise move to nobble Christmas is important because there is a perverse ideological purity to it. It demonstrates the Modi sarkar's determination to flex its majoritarian muscle at every available opportunity, specially in the symbolic realm.
When the BJP won a decisive majority in the general election, there was a broad difference of opinion within what passes for the 'liberal' commentariat in India. On the one hand were the secular dogmatists convinced that the dark side had won. On the other were more supple critics who made the nuanced case that in a democratic system, where political alternation was built into the system, it wasn't fair to pass judgment on a government till it had done some governing.
Even charter members of the first group had to concede that in the aftermath of a famous victory, to predict doom was to sound like disgruntled losers. The second position was, rhetorically, more reasonable at the time. Six months down the line, though, you would have to be extravagantly optimistic to believe that the responsibilities of governance might yet turn the BJP into a moderate centre-right party, committed to inclusive growth.
The power to govern unfettered by the constraints of coalition politics, has, if anything, made the BJP more feral. In the course of these six months we have had one Union minister of the government of India dividing the world into ' Ramzaadon' and ' haramzaadon' while another tried to dragoon children into jumping through sarkari hoops on Christmas Day. We have had riots in Delhi where local BJP politicians have been openly partisan. Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, she of the children-of-Ram- vs-b******s distinction, made a pro-forma apology for her statement... and was promptly sent to campaign for the BJP in Trilokpuri where communal riots had occurred just a few weeks earlier. The fact that the riots had been sparked by pitched battles between Dalits and Muslims wasn't lost on the BJP: Niranjan Jyoti is a Dalit sadhvi, tailor-made for the political polarization in that neighbourhood. We have had a BJP member of parliament, another saffron-robed sadhu, Sakshi Maharaj, make the case for elevating Nathuram Godse into the nationalist pantheon.
None of this should be the occasion for cries of startled betrayal. The empathy for Godse, the sympathy for his motives, the division of the world into Hindu virtue and non-Hindu vice, the willingness to take the 'Hindu' side in communal riots, the belief that India's religious minorities are basically Hindus who have lost their way and ought to be brought home (the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's chief, Mohan Bhagwat, defending ' ghar wapsi' charmingly referred to Christians and Muslims as " apna maal"), are hardy staples of the BJP's politics, they are its core beliefs. The fact that the BJP has aired them enthusiastically in the course of its first six months in office should surprise no one. Ideology matters: this is what the BJP was born to do. Now that it has a parliamentary majority, it can be itself in a way that wasn't possible before.
To say this is not to say I-told-you-so, but to point out that a party's beliefs matter. It is to argue that it was reasonable to anticipate that things like this would happen when Modi won his electoral majority given what we know about him and the BJP. To believe that there is some alchemy produced by the business of ruling that converts ideological viciousness into wise governance is to indulge the liberal's licence to equivocate. The point of punditry is not to seem reasonable; it is, to the extent that it's possible, to be right.
Merry Christmas and a happy, unillusioned, New Year!
December 31, 2014
India: A time of Christmas without Christians (Sanjay Srivastava)
The Hindu, December 27, 2014
A time of Christmas without Christians
Sanjay Srivastava
A religious festival signifies something more than the consumption of commodities; it is meant to remind us of the different kinds of people in society
In New Gurgaon, where I live, Christmas is a very significant affair. This Christmas too, you might have been forgiven for thinking that significant sections of an electorate that voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party suddenly converted to Christianity. All over Gurgaon, Resident’s Welfare Associations organised Christmas fairs where children sang carols, santas gave away gifts, and people of all ages, dressed in red caps, exchanged Christmas greetings. Gurgaon’s Christmas is, of course, now a national event and my description could be applied to December 25 goings-on in a number of cities across India. However, when I rang a friend in Kerala to wish him “Merry Christmas,” he responded that someone else had rung him earlier in the morning, saying he was calling to greet him on what might be the last Christmas in India. Though said in jest (and in reference to recent anti-Christian violence), this comment sits oddly with what appears to be uninhibited and large-scale participation of non-Christian populations in Christmas celebrations. Or, does it? Is it possible that we might have, in fact, come to prefer Christmas without Christians? The manner in which Christmas has come to belong to all of us is not without consequences for a multi-religious society.
When I was small, Christmas was a day that belonged to a specific community. It was, in many cities of North India, referred to as bada din ( big day). “Bada Din Mubarak!” was the term I was taught to use as a greeting, if i came across any Christian on December 25. I don’t think I came across many and hence the greeting remained a pedagogic contrivance rather than customary practice. But what it did teach me, not in a self-conscious ‘secular’ manner but as part of casual, everyday life, was that a specific religious day and a specific religious community were intertwined and legitimate aspects of Indian life. As a child, because Christmas was not my festival, I and several others around me recognised it as a festival that belonged to another community, that was as real and legitimate as mine. In my imagination, Christmas was celebrated by real flesh and blood people who constituted actual communities. Their bada din signified something as valuable as the festivals that I took part in. Hindus and Christians existed as well-defined communities, but not hostile ones. That community was real to me precisely because Christmas and Christianity mapped on to each other.
In recent times, when Hindus have started to celebrate Christmas as their own, we have moved into an era where a festival of legitimate difference has transformed into one of a ritual of leisure and lifestyle. It becomes contiguous with taking a foreign holiday or buying a fridge. It need not remind us any longer of the legitimacy of the community for whom Christmas is something more than a ‘shopping mall festival’ but a fundamental way of defining community life. Celebrating the customs and rituals of another community is not itself a bad thing. However, in this case it appears that when Christmas becomes “our” festival, it ironically weakens the ability to recognise, respect and champion difference. The “mainstreaming” of Christmas sits alongside a growing indifference towards Christians: it is almost as if we can do it as well as them and don’t really need them. It, peculiarly enough, signifies a time of Christmas without Christians.
A shopping festival
The invention of Christmas as a shopping festival has a long history in the West, particularly in the context of late 19th century Britain. The more recent replication of this process in India is intimately tied to shifts in political and consumer cultures. It does, however, have a parallel in the 20th century’s manufacture of yoga as a lifestyle activity in the West, largely shorn of its philosophical bearings. The spread of yoga in the West did not lead to greater tolerance of Indians and the popularity of Christmas in India has little to do with an acceptance of religious differences. Indeed, it is the context of something quite the opposite: the symbolic production and consumption of different ways of being through consumerism that exists side-by-side with the actual suppression of difference. So, while we consume Christmas cake, we don’t seem very bothered by arson in churches. We have begun to prefer pre-packaged difference.
“Celebrating the rituals of another community is not a bad thing, but when Christmas becomes 'our' festival, it weakens the ability to recognise, and respect difference”
It is an odd situation, then, and quite different from when I was a child. Earlier, Christmas was not a festival of the Hindus but Christians were not identified as an enemy community. It was not a utopia of communal harmony but certainly different. Now, however, Christmas finds vigorous acceptance among the majority community — words can hardly convey the earnestness with which the children of my locality sing “Silent Night” — but there are hardly any mainstream murmurs (let alone roars) of protest against anti-Christian sentiments and practices. I don’t ever remember singing “Silent Night” and may have waited in vain to ambush a passing Christian (or anyone else) with a bada din greeting, but I also do not recall church burning and ‘ghar vapsi’ as normalised activities.
What is at stake is something much more fundamental than the tiring invocation of ‘secularism’ versus ‘fundamentalism.’ These categories may not be adequate to understand a present where some sections of the majority community adopt minority rituals but rejects minorities. When we become ‘shopping mall Christians’ — the Christmas celebration in my locality ended with an RWA-sponsored tambola — we forget that a religious festival signifies something more than the consumption of different commodities; it is meant to remind us of the different kinds of people in society. The current upsurge in Christmas celebrations appears, dangerously, to encourage the sense that it is our right to celebrate Christianity’s key event on one day of the year, without taking any responsibility for what happens to its adherents on the other days when we move on to some other form of consumption.
(Sanjay Srivastava is professor of Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.)
A time of Christmas without Christians
Sanjay Srivastava
A religious festival signifies something more than the consumption of commodities; it is meant to remind us of the different kinds of people in society
In New Gurgaon, where I live, Christmas is a very significant affair. This Christmas too, you might have been forgiven for thinking that significant sections of an electorate that voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party suddenly converted to Christianity. All over Gurgaon, Resident’s Welfare Associations organised Christmas fairs where children sang carols, santas gave away gifts, and people of all ages, dressed in red caps, exchanged Christmas greetings. Gurgaon’s Christmas is, of course, now a national event and my description could be applied to December 25 goings-on in a number of cities across India. However, when I rang a friend in Kerala to wish him “Merry Christmas,” he responded that someone else had rung him earlier in the morning, saying he was calling to greet him on what might be the last Christmas in India. Though said in jest (and in reference to recent anti-Christian violence), this comment sits oddly with what appears to be uninhibited and large-scale participation of non-Christian populations in Christmas celebrations. Or, does it? Is it possible that we might have, in fact, come to prefer Christmas without Christians? The manner in which Christmas has come to belong to all of us is not without consequences for a multi-religious society.
When I was small, Christmas was a day that belonged to a specific community. It was, in many cities of North India, referred to as bada din ( big day). “Bada Din Mubarak!” was the term I was taught to use as a greeting, if i came across any Christian on December 25. I don’t think I came across many and hence the greeting remained a pedagogic contrivance rather than customary practice. But what it did teach me, not in a self-conscious ‘secular’ manner but as part of casual, everyday life, was that a specific religious day and a specific religious community were intertwined and legitimate aspects of Indian life. As a child, because Christmas was not my festival, I and several others around me recognised it as a festival that belonged to another community, that was as real and legitimate as mine. In my imagination, Christmas was celebrated by real flesh and blood people who constituted actual communities. Their bada din signified something as valuable as the festivals that I took part in. Hindus and Christians existed as well-defined communities, but not hostile ones. That community was real to me precisely because Christmas and Christianity mapped on to each other.
In recent times, when Hindus have started to celebrate Christmas as their own, we have moved into an era where a festival of legitimate difference has transformed into one of a ritual of leisure and lifestyle. It becomes contiguous with taking a foreign holiday or buying a fridge. It need not remind us any longer of the legitimacy of the community for whom Christmas is something more than a ‘shopping mall festival’ but a fundamental way of defining community life. Celebrating the customs and rituals of another community is not itself a bad thing. However, in this case it appears that when Christmas becomes “our” festival, it ironically weakens the ability to recognise, respect and champion difference. The “mainstreaming” of Christmas sits alongside a growing indifference towards Christians: it is almost as if we can do it as well as them and don’t really need them. It, peculiarly enough, signifies a time of Christmas without Christians.
A shopping festival
The invention of Christmas as a shopping festival has a long history in the West, particularly in the context of late 19th century Britain. The more recent replication of this process in India is intimately tied to shifts in political and consumer cultures. It does, however, have a parallel in the 20th century’s manufacture of yoga as a lifestyle activity in the West, largely shorn of its philosophical bearings. The spread of yoga in the West did not lead to greater tolerance of Indians and the popularity of Christmas in India has little to do with an acceptance of religious differences. Indeed, it is the context of something quite the opposite: the symbolic production and consumption of different ways of being through consumerism that exists side-by-side with the actual suppression of difference. So, while we consume Christmas cake, we don’t seem very bothered by arson in churches. We have begun to prefer pre-packaged difference.
“Celebrating the rituals of another community is not a bad thing, but when Christmas becomes 'our' festival, it weakens the ability to recognise, and respect difference”
It is an odd situation, then, and quite different from when I was a child. Earlier, Christmas was not a festival of the Hindus but Christians were not identified as an enemy community. It was not a utopia of communal harmony but certainly different. Now, however, Christmas finds vigorous acceptance among the majority community — words can hardly convey the earnestness with which the children of my locality sing “Silent Night” — but there are hardly any mainstream murmurs (let alone roars) of protest against anti-Christian sentiments and practices. I don’t ever remember singing “Silent Night” and may have waited in vain to ambush a passing Christian (or anyone else) with a bada din greeting, but I also do not recall church burning and ‘ghar vapsi’ as normalised activities.
What is at stake is something much more fundamental than the tiring invocation of ‘secularism’ versus ‘fundamentalism.’ These categories may not be adequate to understand a present where some sections of the majority community adopt minority rituals but rejects minorities. When we become ‘shopping mall Christians’ — the Christmas celebration in my locality ended with an RWA-sponsored tambola — we forget that a religious festival signifies something more than the consumption of different commodities; it is meant to remind us of the different kinds of people in society. The current upsurge in Christmas celebrations appears, dangerously, to encourage the sense that it is our right to celebrate Christianity’s key event on one day of the year, without taking any responsibility for what happens to its adherents on the other days when we move on to some other form of consumption.
(Sanjay Srivastava is professor of Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.)
December 26, 2014
How Hitler Tried To Redesign Christmas
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3024022/how-hitler-redesigned-christmas
by John Brownlee
23 December 2014
When the Nazis took power in 1933, Christmas was one of their first targets. Not even Santa was safe.
In December 1941, Adolf Hitler threw a Christmas Party for his fellow Nazis. It was a lavish affair, in which the Nazi Party's top officials, statesmen, and generals gathered before a massive Christmas tree to feast and exchange presents with hundreds of jackbooted S.S. cadets in attendance.
In surviving pictures taken by the Führer's own personal photographer, Hitler appears somewhat dour and maybe a little sad to be at this event, as if he feels out of place despite his importance, and no wonder: What holiday could be less suited to the sentiments of that genocidal, warmongering dictator than a Christian holiday celebrating the birth of a Jew?
Yet despite the expression on his face, Hitler sits in these pictures as a conqueror, not just of continental Europe, but also of Christmas—a holiday than in just six years, he managed to redesign into a potent propaganda tool.
Peace On Earth
It wasn't easy. Back during World War II, Germany's population was predominantly Christian. Then as now, Christmas was a popular holiday to celebrate among Germans; in fact, the modern-day Christmas tree actually traces its roots back to the Rhineland in the 16th century. Christmas was too important to Germans for the Nazis to get rid of, yet it represented everything that Hitler despised: the Christian ethic of peace on Earth. He couldn't get rid of it, but he could try to make it his own.
"Christmas represented everything that Hitler despised."
A propaganda article from 1937 entitled New Meanings For "Inherited Customs" shows the considerable mental aerobics that the Nazis had to go through to turn Christmas into a holiday they could broadly support. Christmas is traditionally viewed as a "holiday about a theoretical peace for all humanity,"—an interpretation should be rejected, the article said. (It is hard, after all, to wish peace to all men when you are simultaneously drafting up plans to shove millions of them into gas chambers.) Realizing this, the article's author said that Germans should instead present Christmas as a "holiday of actual domestic national peace," a peace which could presumably only be facilitated by getting rid of enemies of the state such as Jews, gypsies, communists, and homosexuals.
Killing Off Jesus & Santa
Hitler's propaganda war on Christmas by no means ended there. He also set out to get the "Christ" out of Christmas. Unlike in English, Christmas is called Weihnachten in German, so the actual name of the holiday did not require modification to suit the goals of an anti-clerical Führer. Even so, the Nazis preferred a different name for Christmas: Rauhnacht, the Rough Night, which had a tantalizing hint of violence to it.
"Santa was so beloved that not even the Nazis felt that they could wage a war against him. "
But many of the trappings of Christmas are inherently religious, right down to the purported event being celebrated: the birth of Jesus Christ. Luckily for Hitler, Germans had celebrated the winter solstice long before Christianity came to the country. It was fairly easy for Nazi propagandists, therefore, to reclaim Weihnachten as a pagan holiday in which the longest days of winter were marked by gift-giving and a festival of lights.
Songs that mentioned Jesus, like Silent Night, were rewritten with new lyrics espousing the benefits of National Socialism by none other than chief Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg and Heinrich Himmler, one of the masterminds of the Holocaust. At the height of Nazi Christmas revisionism, any mentions of the Savior were replaced with mentions of the "Savior Führer."
"The Nazis preferred a different name for Christmas: Rauhnacht, the Rough Night, which had a tantalizing hint of violence to it."
Jesus had been taken care of, but Santa Claus was not so easily forgotten. Tracing his roots to St. Nicholas of Myra, a fourth-century Greek Christian bishop from Turkey, Santa was both explicitly Christian and very definitely not Aryan. Even so, Santa was so beloved that not even the Nazis felt that they could wage a war against him. Instead, they changed his name. Nazis argued that the white-robed and gray-bearded figure who came to people's houses and gave them gifts on Christmas Day was really the pagan god Odin. Christians had merely stolen him, but now he had been reclaimed.
Christmas Tree Decorations
Other aspects of Christmas had to change, too. Although the modern Christmas tree is an explicitly German invention, the star that is traditionally placed on the top represented a problem for Nazis: either it is a six-pointed star, and becomes the Star of David, or it's a five-pointed star, and resembles the red star of Communism. Ideologically, neither would do. Instead, the Nazis encouraged revelers to place a swastika, a German sun wheel, or a sig rune (the lightning-shaped symbol used in the emblem of the SS) atop their trees instead.
"It was not uncommon to hang replica grenades and machine guns on your Christmas tree during the Nazi years."
Christmas tree decorations also changed. In general, ornaments became a lot more warlike, and it was not uncommon to hang replica grenades and machine guns on your Christmas tree during the Nazi years. But they also became increasingly jingoistic. Surviving ornaments from the Nazi era include silver balls emblazoned with mottos such as "Sieg heil!" red bulbs covered in swastikas, and tchotchkes shaped like Iron Crosses and eagles. There are even ornaments that are just tiny metal Hitler heads (complete with mustache). To his credit, though, even Hitler didn't like these, leading to laws to prevent Nazi symbols from being misused for Christmas kitsch.
The Ghost Of Christmas Future
By 1939, just six years after Hitler came to power, Christmas had been totally transformed into a tool of Nazi propaganda. A contemporary article asserts that "when we celebrate a German Christmas, we include in the circle of the family all those who are of German blood, and who affirm their German ethnicity, all those who came before us and who will come after us, all those whom fate did not allow to live within the borders of our Reich, or who are doing their duty in foreign lands amidst foreign peoples."
"We cannot accept that a German Christmas tree has anything to do with a crib in a manger in Bethlehem," wrote the Nazi propagandist Friedrich Rehm in 1937. He added, "It is inconceivable for us that Christmas and all its deep soulful content is the product of an oriental religion."
Yet Hitler's redesign of Christmas didn't last long. As the Allies advanced, by 1944, worrying about the Christian influences on Christmas was the least of the Nazis' problems, and the holiday was rebranded as a day of remembrance for those who had been lost in the war.
1944 was also the year of last Nazi Christmas. Just four months later, the Führer was dead, and while a few of Himmler's hymns were briefly sung in post-war Germany, the survivors of the war did with Hitler's Christmas what they did with every other idea the Nazis had come up with: denounced it and buried it.
Perhaps that's what explains the strange, sad expression on Hitler's face, sitting there at a table with all his thugs on Christmas, 1941. Maybe he has seen the ghost of Christmas future.
John Brownlee is a writer who lives in Somerville, Massachusetts with two irate parakeets and his wife, who has more exquisite plumage. His work has appeared at Wired, Playboy, PopMech, CNN, Boing Boing, Gizmodo, and more. You can email him john.brownlee+fastco@gmail.com.
by John Brownlee
23 December 2014
When the Nazis took power in 1933, Christmas was one of their first targets. Not even Santa was safe.
In December 1941, Adolf Hitler threw a Christmas Party for his fellow Nazis. It was a lavish affair, in which the Nazi Party's top officials, statesmen, and generals gathered before a massive Christmas tree to feast and exchange presents with hundreds of jackbooted S.S. cadets in attendance.
In surviving pictures taken by the Führer's own personal photographer, Hitler appears somewhat dour and maybe a little sad to be at this event, as if he feels out of place despite his importance, and no wonder: What holiday could be less suited to the sentiments of that genocidal, warmongering dictator than a Christian holiday celebrating the birth of a Jew?
Yet despite the expression on his face, Hitler sits in these pictures as a conqueror, not just of continental Europe, but also of Christmas—a holiday than in just six years, he managed to redesign into a potent propaganda tool.
Peace On Earth
It wasn't easy. Back during World War II, Germany's population was predominantly Christian. Then as now, Christmas was a popular holiday to celebrate among Germans; in fact, the modern-day Christmas tree actually traces its roots back to the Rhineland in the 16th century. Christmas was too important to Germans for the Nazis to get rid of, yet it represented everything that Hitler despised: the Christian ethic of peace on Earth. He couldn't get rid of it, but he could try to make it his own.
"Christmas represented everything that Hitler despised."
A propaganda article from 1937 entitled New Meanings For "Inherited Customs" shows the considerable mental aerobics that the Nazis had to go through to turn Christmas into a holiday they could broadly support. Christmas is traditionally viewed as a "holiday about a theoretical peace for all humanity,"—an interpretation should be rejected, the article said. (It is hard, after all, to wish peace to all men when you are simultaneously drafting up plans to shove millions of them into gas chambers.) Realizing this, the article's author said that Germans should instead present Christmas as a "holiday of actual domestic national peace," a peace which could presumably only be facilitated by getting rid of enemies of the state such as Jews, gypsies, communists, and homosexuals.
Killing Off Jesus & Santa
Hitler's propaganda war on Christmas by no means ended there. He also set out to get the "Christ" out of Christmas. Unlike in English, Christmas is called Weihnachten in German, so the actual name of the holiday did not require modification to suit the goals of an anti-clerical Führer. Even so, the Nazis preferred a different name for Christmas: Rauhnacht, the Rough Night, which had a tantalizing hint of violence to it.
"Santa was so beloved that not even the Nazis felt that they could wage a war against him. "
But many of the trappings of Christmas are inherently religious, right down to the purported event being celebrated: the birth of Jesus Christ. Luckily for Hitler, Germans had celebrated the winter solstice long before Christianity came to the country. It was fairly easy for Nazi propagandists, therefore, to reclaim Weihnachten as a pagan holiday in which the longest days of winter were marked by gift-giving and a festival of lights.
Songs that mentioned Jesus, like Silent Night, were rewritten with new lyrics espousing the benefits of National Socialism by none other than chief Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg and Heinrich Himmler, one of the masterminds of the Holocaust. At the height of Nazi Christmas revisionism, any mentions of the Savior were replaced with mentions of the "Savior Führer."
"The Nazis preferred a different name for Christmas: Rauhnacht, the Rough Night, which had a tantalizing hint of violence to it."
Jesus had been taken care of, but Santa Claus was not so easily forgotten. Tracing his roots to St. Nicholas of Myra, a fourth-century Greek Christian bishop from Turkey, Santa was both explicitly Christian and very definitely not Aryan. Even so, Santa was so beloved that not even the Nazis felt that they could wage a war against him. Instead, they changed his name. Nazis argued that the white-robed and gray-bearded figure who came to people's houses and gave them gifts on Christmas Day was really the pagan god Odin. Christians had merely stolen him, but now he had been reclaimed.
Christmas Tree Decorations
Other aspects of Christmas had to change, too. Although the modern Christmas tree is an explicitly German invention, the star that is traditionally placed on the top represented a problem for Nazis: either it is a six-pointed star, and becomes the Star of David, or it's a five-pointed star, and resembles the red star of Communism. Ideologically, neither would do. Instead, the Nazis encouraged revelers to place a swastika, a German sun wheel, or a sig rune (the lightning-shaped symbol used in the emblem of the SS) atop their trees instead.
"It was not uncommon to hang replica grenades and machine guns on your Christmas tree during the Nazi years."
Christmas tree decorations also changed. In general, ornaments became a lot more warlike, and it was not uncommon to hang replica grenades and machine guns on your Christmas tree during the Nazi years. But they also became increasingly jingoistic. Surviving ornaments from the Nazi era include silver balls emblazoned with mottos such as "Sieg heil!" red bulbs covered in swastikas, and tchotchkes shaped like Iron Crosses and eagles. There are even ornaments that are just tiny metal Hitler heads (complete with mustache). To his credit, though, even Hitler didn't like these, leading to laws to prevent Nazi symbols from being misused for Christmas kitsch.
The Ghost Of Christmas Future
By 1939, just six years after Hitler came to power, Christmas had been totally transformed into a tool of Nazi propaganda. A contemporary article asserts that "when we celebrate a German Christmas, we include in the circle of the family all those who are of German blood, and who affirm their German ethnicity, all those who came before us and who will come after us, all those whom fate did not allow to live within the borders of our Reich, or who are doing their duty in foreign lands amidst foreign peoples."
"We cannot accept that a German Christmas tree has anything to do with a crib in a manger in Bethlehem," wrote the Nazi propagandist Friedrich Rehm in 1937. He added, "It is inconceivable for us that Christmas and all its deep soulful content is the product of an oriental religion."
Yet Hitler's redesign of Christmas didn't last long. As the Allies advanced, by 1944, worrying about the Christian influences on Christmas was the least of the Nazis' problems, and the holiday was rebranded as a day of remembrance for those who had been lost in the war.
1944 was also the year of last Nazi Christmas. Just four months later, the Führer was dead, and while a few of Himmler's hymns were briefly sung in post-war Germany, the survivors of the war did with Hitler's Christmas what they did with every other idea the Nazis had come up with: denounced it and buried it.
Perhaps that's what explains the strange, sad expression on Hitler's face, sitting there at a table with all his thugs on Christmas, 1941. Maybe he has seen the ghost of Christmas future.
John Brownlee is a writer who lives in Somerville, Massachusetts with two irate parakeets and his wife, who has more exquisite plumage. His work has appeared at Wired, Playboy, PopMech, CNN, Boing Boing, Gizmodo, and more. You can email him john.brownlee+fastco@gmail.com.
December 15, 2014
Withdraw the HRD Order - CPIM statement re interference in the schedule of schools which go on Christmas vacation
December 15, 2014
Press Statement
The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement:
Withdraw the HRD Order
The Human Resources Development Ministry has taken yet another offensive and unjustifiable decision to ask CBSE and other government-run schools to observe "good governance day" on Christmas day, December 25. Already the Navodaya schools' management have decided that the schools will remain open on December 24 and 25.
This is a crude interference in the schedule of schools which go on Christmas vacation from December 24 and is an assault on the religious right of the Christian community.
The Polit Bureau demands the withdrawal of this communally motivated instruction. If the government wants to observe "good governance day" on December 25, it should do so without involving the schools.
Central Committee
Communist Party of India (Marxist)
A.K. Gopalan Bhawan
27-29, Bhai Vir Singh Marg, Gole Market
New Delhi 110 001
Press Statement
The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement:
Withdraw the HRD Order
The Human Resources Development Ministry has taken yet another offensive and unjustifiable decision to ask CBSE and other government-run schools to observe "good governance day" on Christmas day, December 25. Already the Navodaya schools' management have decided that the schools will remain open on December 24 and 25.
This is a crude interference in the schedule of schools which go on Christmas vacation from December 24 and is an assault on the religious right of the Christian community.
The Polit Bureau demands the withdrawal of this communally motivated instruction. If the government wants to observe "good governance day" on December 25, it should do so without involving the schools.
Central Committee
Communist Party of India (Marxist)
A.K. Gopalan Bhawan
27-29, Bhai Vir Singh Marg, Gole Market
New Delhi 110 001
December 25, 2008
Christmas for Orissa: Send Your Greetings
CHRISTMAS FOR ORISSA CAMPAIGN
PRAY FOR PEACE, FIGHT FOR JUSTICE, SAVE CHRISTMAS IN ORISSASend a greeting card to the people in power, urging them to act in favour of peace and justice!!!
Orissa Concerns
All you need to do:
1. Forward this mail, putting all email addresses of authorities (pl see appended).
2. Delete the portions which are above and below the dotted lines.
3. Add a line or two of your own message, if you like.
4. Send it.
5. Forward this appeal to your friends.
-----------------
Dear Friends,
The Christmas of 2008, traditionally an occasion for joy and hope, threatens to be a dark and fearful day for the people of Orissa.
While the bandh on Christmas Day has been called off by the VHP, the lack of any substantive serious change in the condition of those living in refugee camps and the constant sense of fear of further violence around Christmas remains to be a cause of concern. It was on Christmas Day last year that the attacks, organised by the VHP, Bajrang Dal, RSS and other Hindutva extremist groups, were launched.
In renewed violence since late August this year over 60 people have been killed, several women including nuns raped, over 4,400 houses and 151 churches destroyed and more than 18,000 people injured. Even as we write this there are over 50,000 people homeless and living in the most atrocious conditions unable to return to their homes due to fear and lack of state protection.
We sincerely appeal to people of all religions in Orissa, the rest of India and indeed all over the world to join the Christmas for Orissa Campaign to:
· Defeat the politics of hate indulged in by extremist organisations;
· Prevent the recurrence of further violence in the state;
· Preserve the spirit of Christmas; and
· Prevail upon the Indian and Orissa governments to protect the lives and livelihood of innocent citizens.
This Christmas for Orissa Campaign is part of already ongoing efforts in Orissa and elsewhere with similar objectives. In an effort to make Peace and Justice in Orissa the theme of this year's Christmas all over the world, send this Christmas/New Year greeting card (attached) to Indian government officials and VHP/RSS/BJP leaders. Below are some people you could mail Christmas greetings to:
Chief Minister (Orissa), Chair - National Human Rights Commission, Chief Justice (High Court) - Dr. Balbir Singh Chauhan, Chief Justice (Supreme Court), Prime Minister - Manmohan Singh, President - Pratibha Patil, L.K. Advani (BJP) - Leader of the Opposition, President (Bharatiya Janata Party) - Rajnath Singh,Vishwa Hindu Parishad (New Delhi)
You can cut/paste the email addresses as below to send the greeting -
cmo@ori.nic.in, covdnhrc@nic.in, highcour@ori.nic.in, supremecourt@nic.in, manmohan@sansad.nic.in, presidentofindia@rb.nic.in, advanilk@sansad.nic.in, bjpco@bjp.org, jaishriram@vsnl.in
Do spread the word.
For updates on Orissa you can visit http://blog.
All those interested in joining or contributing to the campaign are requested to contact:
christmasfororissa@gmail.com
December 23, 2008
Jingle Bells Redux
Orissa Concerns Blog
Breaking every law
The mobs came asking blood
O'er the fields we ran
And very few got away
The police stood and watched
While Bajrang Dalis torched
Our houses by the night
And people by the day
Oh, jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
It's no fun to be a minority
In Orissa today
Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
All we want is the Sangh Parivar
Would let us live and pray
Not so long ago
We thought we would be fine
But soon these Sanghi goons
Came and stole the shine
The plot was mean and dark
A swamiji was shot
We were blamed for it
And a massacre we got
Oh, jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
It's no fun to be a minority
In Orissa today
Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
All we want is the government
To ensure some fair play
Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
Oh, what future do we have
In Orissa today
Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
We will fight and we will win
And keep the fascists AWAY!!
Breaking every law
The mobs came asking blood
O'er the fields we ran
And very few got away
The police stood and watched
While Bajrang Dalis torched
Our houses by the night
And people by the day
Oh, jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
It's no fun to be a minority
In Orissa today
Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
All we want is the Sangh Parivar
Would let us live and pray
Not so long ago
We thought we would be fine
But soon these Sanghi goons
Came and stole the shine
The plot was mean and dark
A swamiji was shot
We were blamed for it
And a massacre we got
Oh, jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
It's no fun to be a minority
In Orissa today
Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
All we want is the government
To ensure some fair play
Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
Oh, what future do we have
In Orissa today
Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
We will fight and we will win
And keep the fascists AWAY!!
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