Calls to bar Muslims from Navratri celebrations attack the everyday India that ordinary citizens practise, and the Constitution that protects it.
Every year, on Diwali, Holi and Navratri, I send greetings to my Hindu friends. I do it with affection and respect, and nobody will stop me. On Eid and through Ramzan, those friends return the gesture with the same warmth. This exchange is not a slogan. It is how India actually works, in neighbourhoods, offices and homes, far away from the microphones of those who claim to speak for entire communities.
That is why the recent demands by certain organisations to keep Muslims out of Garba and Dandiya events deserve a firm answer. Dressed up as guidelines, complete with Aadhaar checks at the gate and a tilak as proof of belonging, these diktats claim to protect the sanctity of a festival. What they protect is a smaller, meaner idea of what a festival is. Navratri celebrates the divine feminine through dance, music and shared joy. Turning that into a members-only club, with identity papers demanded at the door, does not honour the goddess. It insults the openness that gave the festival its reach in the first place.
The Constitution is not a document of convenience to be cited on some days and ignored on others. It guarantees every citizen the freedom to profess and practise faith, and it forbids discrimination on religious grounds. When people of different faiths join one another’s celebrations, they do not dilute anyone’s religion. They give life to the promise of equality and fraternity written into the Preamble. A fatwa of hate, whether it comes from a mosque or a mandal, carries no authority over that promise. Extremists of every stripe use the same tools: suspicion, exclusion and the demand that people prove their loyalty before they are allowed to belong.
Terrorists and fanatics feed on exactly this kind of division. Their project is to make us forget the neighbour who sends sweets across the fence, the colleague who wishes us well without asking about our faith, the friend who turns up first when trouble comes. Replace trust with suspicion often enough and the country they want begins to take shape. Our job is to refuse them the satisfaction. India’s strength has always been its capacity to hold many identities at once without demanding that any of them vanish.
Festival organisers have a choice. They can open their gates wider, or they can hand them over to men with checklists. Citizens have a choice too, and it is a simple one: keep greeting each other across religious lines, keep dancing together, keep showing up. Neither terror nor hate-filled fatwas can outlast the daily practice of respect and friendship. Let us be Indians first, proud of our differences and stronger for them, and stand for a secular India that belongs to all its people.
