[The authorities recently detained 32 carolers
and the priests who came to help them. The wife of a prominent politician was
excoriated online for endorsing a Christmas charity event, and earlier this
month, a far-right Hindu group sent letters to schools warning them that
celebrating Christmas would be done “at their own risk.” The group threatened
unspecified consequences.]
By Kai Schultz and Suhasini Raj
 |
|
A
Christmas display at a New Delhi mall. Though Christians are a small minority
in India,
celebrating
the holiday appeals to many outside the faith.
Credit
The New York Times
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NEW
DELHI — Tehmina Yadav is a
Muslim woman married to a Hindu man. The other night, she was hanging ornaments
on a Christmas tree.
In India, a country that is about 80 percent
Hindu, Christmas is becoming big business. Airlines play Christmas music, online
vendors sell holiday gift baskets, and one especially enterprising young man,
Kabir Mishra, rents out a contingent of Hindus dressed as Santa Claus.
“I can provide as many Santas as you want,”
he said.
Sitting next to her Christmas tree at home in
Delhi, Ms. Yadav said that in India, there was nothing strange about
non-Christians celebrating Christmas. Indians have always observed a dizzying
number of festivals regardless of religious affiliation, and even though
Christians represent only 2.3 percent of the population, Christmas is
recognized as a government holiday.
But as far-right Hindu groups have gained
traction, India has changed. Christmas has now found itself caught in the cross
hairs.
The authorities recently detained 32 carolers
and the priests who came to help them. The wife of a prominent politician was
excoriated online for endorsing a Christmas charity event, and earlier this
month, a far-right Hindu group sent letters to schools warning them that
celebrating Christmas would be done “at their own risk.” The group threatened
unspecified consequences.
“We are afraid of Christmas this year,” A. C.
Michael, the national coordinator of the United Christian Forum, an Indian
advocacy group, said in a statement.
Shortly after Prime Minister Narendra Modi
came to power in 2014, some officials in his government pushed a short-lived
campaign to change the official recognition of Christmas to “Good Governance
Day.”
It is all part of a broader ideological
battle that has produced countless acts of violence and harassment across India
based on religious identity.
While reflecting on decades of celebrating
Christmas, Ms. Yadav expressed concern that what used to be just a fun holiday
had become increasingly policed and intertwined with religion.
“Earlier on, you celebrated everything,” she
said. “You kind of absorbed everybody’s culture and tradition without
questioning it. Now, you don’t. Religion has become a new mantra for people.”
When British colonizers came to India, they
brought Christmas with them. Sanjay Srivastava, a sociology professor at Delhi
University, said the global spread of consumerism had helped popularize the
holiday, especially among a moneyed Hindu elite.
But as Christmas and other Western holidays
like Halloween have gained popularity, Indian cities have also become more
segregated along religious lines, he said. Christmas is often celebrated by
Indians looking to appear cosmopolitan, he added, but who do not necessarily
see Christianity as having a “legitimate role in the cultural life of the
country.”
In some parts of India this month, tensions
over the holiday erupted into confrontations.
On Dec. 14, carolers affiliated with the
Roman Catholic Church were assaulted by a mob in a village in the state of
Madhya Pradesh. But instead of charging members of the mob with a crime, the
police arrested the carolers under a law against inflaming religious
sentiments.
Eight priests who came to the police station
to help were also detained. Outside the station, their car was set on fire.
“We are pained, and we are shocked,” said
Cardinal Moran Mor Baselios Cleemis, president of the Catholic Bishops’
Conference of India, at a news conference in New Delhi. “This incident creates
further anxiety in the minds and hearts of the Christian faithful and the
minorities in the country.”
Amruta Fadnavis, the wife of the chief
minister of Maharashtra State, also provoked a major controversy by promoting a
Christmas charity event for poor children in Mumbai. Social media exchanges
became so intense that Ms. Fadnavis wrote a follow-up message on Twitter
affirming that she was a “proud Hindu.”
On Monday, the Hindu Jagran Manch, a
far-right Hindu group, sent letters to schools in the north Indian city of
Aligarh warning administrators of repercussions if they celebrated the holiday
in classrooms. The local police said they would provide security in all schools
and colleges in Aligarh on Dec. 25.
A Christmas celebration in a village in
Rajasthan was also disrupted on Tuesday, according to news reports, when a
different Hindu group descended on a community center there, throwing away hymn
books and accusing participants of trying to convert locals.
Chetan Rajhans, 34, a spokesman for the
Sanatan Sanstha, a right-wing Hindu organization, said Christmas promoted a
“Western culture of materialistic immorality.”
“Christmas is a festival that is not
conducive to Indian culture or tradition, and it is in schools that the first
level of conversion begins,” he said by telephone, referring to classroom
celebrations in which Santa distributes presents and children “begin to get
attracted towards Christianity.”
“We have started copying European culture in
the garb of celebrating Western festivals,” he added.
But despite these contentious questions
hanging over the holiday, Christmas preparations moved forward in much of the
country, with vendors reporting brisk sales of Christmas-themed gift baskets,
stuffed Santas and miniature Nativity scenes.
“Every year, it’s just crazy,” said Radhika
Anand, who helps manage Christmas events at a big shopping center in Delhi. “It
doesn’t matter if you’re not a Christian. Indians believe in celebrating.”
Sifting through costumes of the Virgin Mary
for her 5-year-old daughter at a middle-class market across town, Priyanka
Haldunia, 32, said that though she is Hindu, she thought of Christmas as a
teaching opportunity.
“We visit a gurdwara as often as a mosque,”
she said, referring to a place of worship for Sikhs. “This is a form of
national integration that I want to instill in my daughter. It is very
important.”
Surabhi Sukriti, 37, from Mumbai, said
Christmas was so widely celebrated in her housing complex that visitors were
shocked to learn how few Christians actually lived there. She and her family
celebrate the holiday by baking pastries and recruiting Ms. Sukriti’s brother
to dress up as Santa Claus to deliver presents to her 8-year-old son.
At Ms. Yadav’s home, Reyhaan, 13, her son,
has submitted his Christmas list (a typewriter and a camera), and earlier this
month, Ms. Yadav started planning the food menu: a leg of ham, quiche and a
cheese board. Other families said that they ate typical Indian sweets like
gulab jamun, a ball of dough dipped in liquid sugar, on the holiday.
Ms. Yadav acknowledged that she came from a
position of privilege. She lives in a cosmopolitan neighborhood where observing
three religions in one household does not provoke the same ire that it might in
some Indian villages.
But she noted that the same gusto for
celebrating Christmas did not necessarily extend to other holidays in her social
circle.
“If you were to ask me how many of my Hindu
friends even want to celebrate Eid, it would probably be zero,” she said,
referring to Eid al-Adha, a major Muslim religious observance.
Minhazz Majumdar, 48, Ms. Yadav’s sister,
said the growing emphasis on identity politics in India meant religion, caste
and holiday celebrations were becoming increasingly used to polarize
communities.
“The India we grew up in was definitely more
inclusive,” she said. “It has not descended into madness totally, because there
are still people who are trying to show the universality of our cultural
experiences, but it’s like a pot that is on the boil.”
Follow Kai Schultz and Suhasini Raj on
Twitter: @Kai_Schultz and @suhasiniraj.
