They also should understand the joy of roaming in the night during Tihar, the mood of being a bit untamed during the festival of colors, and the sense of being merrily free during the Shiva festival.
But the authorities must think about security and hence they have to regulate laws. People who have anti-social and criminal motives should be discouraged. The administration should be responsible. Such ideas are good but are mistimed and misplaced. Why should controlling the thugs and criminals fall during the festive times? Why should the festivals be the mark of administrative control? And why shouldn’t administration plan smooth functioning of singing and dancing?
The argument is that the festivals are vulnerable, that is why government institutions must be careful. But carefulness should be the matter of first taking care of the nuances of festivals and then the dangers and adversities.
Nepali and South Asian festivals are some of the most wonderful cultural spectacles, which should be regulated without control. I may sound paradoxical but the institutions of control must comprehend the nature of festivals in countries like Nepal and India.
Festivals like Holi and Shivaratri, and many specific regional and ethnic festivals, are liberal, abundant, profuse, and wild and they do not entirely fall under disciplinary norms. We celebrate them very limitedly within a year and they have multiple social and psychological functions. They heal us by freeing us from the fundamentals of social control. The paranoid institutional administrative plans should know the nature of festivals before regulating laws. I borrow the ideas below about the nature of festival from a very renowned Russian writer Mikhail Bakhtin to put forward my arguments.
These festivals turn the life a bit inside out by excessive of freedom and laughter. They renew and reestablish social relationships within groups and communities. People sing and dance to celebrate the naturalness of human behavior, the lives otherwise become very artificial by systematized modern ways. Eccentricity, abstraction, and even profanation are some of the qualities of festivals and people know where and how to draw the lines. Policing needs control instead of the festivals.
The institutional laws of the land should be on guard as the followers of the festivals instead of being masters of moral code. Laws should not prescribe policing of the festivities by fixing time and space. There are better ways to maintain order rather than sending decrees. What the administrative mechanism wrongly thinks is that they can maintain order by editing the nature of festivals.
Eccentricity, abstraction, and even profanation are some of the qualities of festivals and people know where and how to draw the lines. Policing needs control instead of the festivals.
Tihar-Diwali is a night affair with singing and dancing, laughing and roaming. The policing institutions must understand the significance of relationship, which disturbs the neighborhood by occupying the lanes and streets. Let the neighbors be disturbed by the smiling children and drumming youths!
Holi is the festival of wild colors amidst a bit of roughness of behavior and bawdiness in language. Masquerading the unsocial is not being unsocial. Festivals allow such multiple masquerading. Similarly, Shivaratri allows a bit of performing roughness. You have to be unauthentic, direct, and free to be part of such festivities. Do you go to the beach putting on the best suit?
Can you imagine that once upon a time we had to stand nationalistically in the theatre halls after the end of each Nepali and Hindi film? The entire movie may be of rape and violence, fights and wars, and love and romance, but irrespective of the moods of the audience, the hall would reverberate with national anthem. I remember a friend was unable to negotiate between Dev Anand’s last dialogue and the lines from the national song. This is how the metropolitan authorities prescribed nationalism during the Panchayat times.
A friend’s nephew used to take parental permission to date his girl. His romantic evenings were always marred by parting before six o’ clock at the Himalayan Java restaurant. You begin drinking coffee after six. He became sad and told me about his failures. I said you don’t date at breakfast, and leaving before six is even worse. I will not be surprised if he becomes a legal administrative officer or a police chief in future.
There is a difference between regulating the festive celebration and making a list by the administration about what to practice. If the night life is the essence of a festival, you cannot force people to celebrate it before dark. Revering Shiva around smoky Pashupatinath premises cannot be altered by a glass of Ganga-jal.
Many of the festivals provide the charisma of unorganized naturalness of lives.
They are the essential paradoxes of culture, which provide meaningfulness to people and their relationship with the surroundings. They are not anti-social. So let the police be on guard while the youths sing and dance a bit late into the night.
orungupto@gmail.com