Veteran actress Soni Razdan has sparked a fresh controversy by describing bursting even a single firecracker on Diwali as “anti-life, anti-health and anti-national”. While concerns about pollution and children’s health are legitimate subjects of discussion, casually attaching the label of anti-nationalism to a traditional Hindu Diwali celebration is a gigantic leap.
In an Instagram post on Wednesday, Razdan argued that air pollution was making children sick and causing them to miss school. She urged people to celebrate a cracker-free Diwali and declared that bursting even one cracker was, in her opinion, anti-national. She subsequently disabled comments on her post.
However, Razdan’s remarks invite an interesting question about patriotism, public morality, and the tendency of certain celebrities to hand out certificates of nationalism to ordinary Indians.
There is another connection worth remembering. Soni Razdan is the stepmother of Rahul Bhatt, son of filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, whose friendship with Pakistani-American terrorist David Coleman Headley became a major subject of investigation following the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.
Rahul met Headley at a Mumbai gym in 2006, and the two became friends. Investigators subsequently alleged that Headley had taken Rahul along on visits to several locations that were later targeted during the November 2008 attacks, including the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Trident and Leopold Cafe. The prosecution examined Rahul as a witness in the 26/11 case. There was no finding that Rahul was involved in the terror conspiracy, and he maintained that he did not know about Headley’s terrorist activities.
Headley, meanwhile, was a Lashkar-e-Taiba operative who conducted reconnaissance for the attacks that killed 166 people.
None of this makes Soni Razdan responsible for her stepson’s association with Headley. But if celebrities want to lecture Indians about nationalism, perhaps they should appreciate that patriotism cannot be measured by whether someone lights a firecracker on Diwali.
Pollution deserves serious attention. But branding millions of Indians’ festive traditions as anti-national is hardly a constructive way of making that argument.
