Ranjona Banerji: Pollution has no religion

Commuters drive through smog in New Delhi a day after Diwali According to the weather office respirable pollutants breached the 1000microgram mark in the Capital and shot up nearly 10 times above normal on Monday PicAFPHow did you celebrate Diwali Did you cower at home trying to find some relief from the earsplitting noise and the toxic air Or were you out there with the strongest and the most patriotic doing your divine duty by exploding the loudest firecrackers Were you worried about the effect of all the festivities on animals children and the elderly or did you dismiss all that as elitist and liberal nonsense as you sent up loud rockets mdash not made in China of course because you are a true nationalist after allDid it seem to you that every person criticising the air quality should be sent off pronto to Pakistan mdash which as we know now is the place where anyone who criticises anything someone else sees as anti our culture has to be sentOf all the stupidest things to divide us the way we celebrate Diwali is the latest and by far the most absurd Various news reports have suggested that this Diwali Delhis air quality plunged to its worst in the last three years Apparently there were some areas in the Capital where visibility was reported to be zero thanks to all the smog North India is bad enough at this time of the year as there is very little wind So whatever rubbish permeates the air stays there through winter Add to that the fact that harvest burning in neighbouring states pollutes Delhis air too and this Diwali just made the environment a horrifying cocktail of bad airMumbai which has the sea advantage also suffered perhaps not as much as Delhi but every pollution tracking agency put air quality in the Maximum City at the very poor level as atmospheric inversion increases at this time of the year The problem of toxic air has nothing to do with culture and attacking someones sense of being Indian or belonging to this religion or that The issue needed to be handled with common sense It is remarkableindeed that anyone would even put forward that argument mdash but they have It is true that in years gone by we behaved differently Firecrackers were seen as an integral part of Diwali celebrations I absolutely loved them The smell of cordite that hangs in the air on Diwali smells more beautiful to me than Chanel No 5 But so what In fact much to my horror I learnt recently that my once favshyourite snake cracker is the most polluting of all Mea culpa Mea maxima culpaThings change ideas change and people sometimes have to be forced to change My minimal pleasure is definitely nothing compared to the damage being inflicted on countless others Surely its something worth taking into consideration And there is enough evidence that fireworks are not in fact an integral part of Diwali celebrations nor is it a festival of sound It is a festival of light it is a festival of money it is a festival of the Goddess it is a festival of seasons it is a celebration of a new year mdash it is all things to all people And it has been one of Indias most secular festivals because people across religions often participate in itThe whining of the Hindutvaindoctrinated Indian has now made criticism of pollution an antiHindu activity Is there any sense in that for the thinking person Does the idea of religion and celebration have to be so narrow that it refuses to acknowledge there may be differing points of view and that there are some real problems with this kind of behaviourApparently if you complain about sound and noise pollution during Diwali you must also with the same emphasis at the same time complain about animal sacrifice during Bakri Eid and crop burning by farmers Otherwise you are a liberal Westernised pinko antiHindu athshyeist profarmer proMuslim hypocrite Have I covered every bit of absurdity in this argument by the antipeople antianimal antiplant antiplanet Diwali noise and air pollution advocatesMeanwhile in the little Himalayan village where I live winter is on its way in No one wants to be out at night if they dont need to No one I have discovered even wants to botshyher with clay diyas when electric lights will do This year the fireworks light and sound lasted about an hour and by 10 pm there was only the occasional bombMaybe this cold weather is the revenge of the planet I hope soRanjona Banerji is a senior journalist You can follow her on Twitter ranjona Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom