Tejasvi Surya, Diwali is Happy, a Jashn, a Riwaaj, Whether You Like it or Not

Tejasvi Surya, mingling of cultures is real India! Nothing is 100% pure here – not ghee, not culture, not language!

Ban Tejasvi Surya's Jashn-e-Nafrat

(Illustration: Arnica Kala)

Video Producer: Shohini Bose

Video Editor: Sandeep Suman

Camera: Shiv Kumar Maurya

Yeh Jo India Hai Na… here, we may no longer be able to say Happy Diwali to each other! Why? Because Tejasvi Surya says so. ‘Happy’ is an English word, meaning Christian, meaning non-Hindu, and so it can’t be used before the shudh (pure) Hindu festival of Diwali.

Because if we do so, it will lead to a big, loaded, high-funda word – the ‘ABRAHAMIFICATION’ of Indian culture!

But the fact is that MILLIONS of us Indians are going send BILLIONS of Happy Diwali greetings, whether Tejasvi likes it or not.

What is ‘abrahamification’? In fact, I’m surprised Tejasvi hasn’t coined the word ‘IBRAHIM-IFICATION’, because that would suit his brand of hate and bigotry even better.

Simply put, according to him, it is the ‘Christianising’ or ‘Muslimification’ of Hindu culture. A culture which, according to him, owes nothing, nor should ever borrow anything from any other culture other than 100 percent pure Hindu culture.

(Photo: Twitter screenshot)

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DEAR TEJASVI, NOTHING IS PURE – NOT LANGUAGE, NOR CULTURE

But Tejasvi, my bro from cosmo Bengaluru, this mixing and mingling is key! Nothing is 100 percent pure here – not ghee, not culture, not language!

Not in India, nor in Priti Patel’s England, or Kamala Harris’s US, or in Sunil Narine’s West Indies! That is how the modern world is. We are all today standing on the shoulders of multiple civilizations – Chinese, Arab, Egyptian, Greek, Persian, and of course Indian, among many many others.

From the cricket you play, to the burger, biryani, samosa you eat, to the jeans and t-shirt you wear, to the science we use to make life-saving vaccines, to the languages you speak – Kannada, Hindi, whatever. It has emerged from the churn of many incredibly rich civilizations over thousands of years.

But then I ask myself, how does Tejasvi Surya not know all this? Does he not know, as Sohail Hashmi writing for The Quint tells us, that several words in Kannada itself are of Persian and Arabic origin?

'Fursat' or ‘spare time’ in Kannada, is of Persian origin. ‘Parwaah’ or ‘to care’ in Kannada, is of Persian origin. ‘Galeej’ or having a ‘dirty mind’, comes from the Arabic word ‘ghaleez’. Surely Tejasvi knows that many Hindi words too – Halwa, Hawa, Kanoon, Khatra, Rishwat, Ameer, Gareeb, to name a few – are of Arabic origin, while Dukaan, Namak, Samosa, Aspataal, Beemar and many others are of Farsi or Persian origin?

My sense is that Tejasvi Surya does know all this, but such facts do not fit his brand of ‘hate and divide’ politics. For India’s hate mongers, it helps to label Urdu as the language of Muslims, Biryani as food of the Muslims, for words like Abba and Miya to only signify Muslims.

It allows them to say, Muslims are different. And that’s important for them, because it's easier to spread hate about someone who is shown, falsely, to be different.

DEAR TEJASVI, WE ARE ALL HINDUSTANI

It would not suit Tejasvi Surya to let his followers know that 60 percent of Urdu comes from Sanskrit. It would not suit Tejasvi Surya for Indians to teach themselves about India’s composite culture, about our Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb, about what it means to be HINDUSTANI.

That would make Muslims as Indian as him, which would then make them very hard to hate, and the hate brigade can’t have that.

Let's also understand that these are repeat offenders. In 2015, Tejasvi Surya tweeted this:

(Photo: Twitter screenshot)

This tweet was so inflammatory that the Modi government asked Twitter to withdraw it, though conveniently, only 5 years later.

YEH JO INDIA HAI NA, HERE HATE AND POLARISATION ARE REWARDED

The other clear pattern is that divisive, hate speech seems to be rewarded. If ‘polariser’ is on your political resume, you rise. Be it Yogi Adityanath, be it Pragya Thakur, be it Tejasvi Surya.

No wonder then, that right after Tejasvi Surya’s remarks came Ananth Kumar Hegde’s bigoted comments on the Aamir Khan ad about bursting patakhas on the road. No wonder a man called Swami Parmatmanand speaking in Chhattisgarh at a function attended by BJP leaders, publicly called for the beheading of minorities. Maybe he too will get an election ticket soon.

Yeh Jo India Hai Na, here some people thrive by spewing hate. While India celebrates Diwali, these haters celebrate DVESH (hate). We need to decide – Do we want hate or love?