The Delhi Police deployed over 18,000 personnel across the national capital to keep a strict vigil on any kind of violations only to ensure security of the people during the so-called New Year celebrations. These crazy events are considered dangerous and quite life-threatening! During the last December 31 in Delhi, a huge police deployment was divided into two shifts for adequate security cover. There were over 300 arrest parties at various locations to nab wild lawbreakers. At least 125 sensitive spots were identified to book alcohol-loaded revellers driving vehicles to kill and get killed. Not strangely, last year, just when Covid was beginning to recede, out of 657 challans issued on New Year's eve, 36 related to drunk driving. The Gregorian New Year celebrations are also big reason for terrible headaches for both parents and police personnel. Parents keep waiting with bated breath for unruly children, both boys and girls, to return home in one piece and police remain under tremendous pressure to ensure peace and public safety.
There is nothing so sinning about celebrating a popular world event as the Gregorian calendar rules supreme across the globe. But the hardcore conservative cultures like the Chinese, Saudi Arabians and the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a political and economic alliance of six Middle Eastern countries comprising Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman do not indulge in the December 31 celebrations for they have their own very exclusive New Year to celebrate with pride. Even Korea and many South East Asian countries like Bangladesh do not go mad about December 31.
Incidentally, the Julian calendar was modified by Pope Gregory XIII in the 16th century just to make the months remain tightly within the annual solar movement thereby making the months absolutely synchronous with the orbiting sun. Pope Gregory XIII was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from May 13, 1572 to his death in April 1585. He had commissioned the Gregorian calendar by removing flaws from the prevailing one then. The principal change was to space Leap Years differently so as to make the average calendar year 365.2425 days long, more closely approximating the 365.2422-day 'tropical' or 'solar' year that is determined by the Earth's revolution around the Sun. This one fitted well and remains the internationally-accepted civil calendar to this day. But all said and done, this New Year is essentially a Christian event. It may be noted well that until late, the New Year on the 1st of January was not even an official holiday in the UK.
However, no one knows clearly why some of the great Indians, particularly rank politicians, put up huge flex hoardings across vantage urban and rural locations to express great wishes to all creatures for the coming year just prior to December 31. Most of them say in their ‘clumsily-worded' messages that the English new year be joyfully fruitful and meaningful for every animal. Politicians of all hierarchies put their own artificially smiling face with folded hands on the extreme left grid of the hoarding frame and the popular top leader's somewhere in the middle or the upper right corner. Not only politicians, but also leading vernacular dailies carry meaningless messages like ‘English New Year’s wishes' for all. It is okay to mark politicians going wrong on anything and getting away and people not minding at all as they never take them seriously. The hoardings though are merrily ignored. But what shocks most is the fact that leading dailies of Odisha commit the same unforgivable blunder thereby confusing the masses. People normally trust the text used by popular newspapers. And when they say it is ‘English New Year’, they are misleading people and driving conscious ones mad. They do not seem to know that it is not English but focusedly Christian.
In 2018, the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, a rightwing Hindu outfit, had appealed to most Indians to discard the Christian new year and do so on Chaitra Shuddha Pratipada day, also known as Gudhipadwa, which has been celebrated in mid-April since ages in India. The wise Hindus of India celebrate New Year on the day Sun begins to get above the tropics at the close spring. This has to do so much with agriculture particularly in relation to food production and conservation of nature.
A recent surveys show that kids taste their first gulp of alcoholic drink and first puff of cigarette during the Christian New Year celebrations. This causes great harm to social morality, disturbs law and order and degenerates younger generations beyond repair. The age-old human-friendly Indian culture is in grave danger of being lost forever. Unfortunately, several unacceptable Christian festivals including the Valentine’s Day are enthusiastically observed by Indians. But countless events and festivals protecting community and culture have been lost in the last two decades.
Most significantly, great pilgrimage centres of India that encouraged happy, harmonious community life and a healthy society through their routine festivals have now been reduced to locations of tourist interest only. Great shrines and places of worship in India, more so Hindu temples, are being used as points of commerce only because of change in looking at things and critical aspects of life.
The majestic temple of Puri in Odisha is abode for deities that are extremely strict about rituals and rites. They are the principal deities of the Odia community who also guide people through their religious rulebook. The deities celebrate New Year on a solar calendar day in mid-April called severally in different States. But the biggies in all domains of the State converge in Puri to cause all kinds of woe. They crowd out there, congest local roads and paths, devour all food, cause chaos and public disorder, promote robbers and pickpockets under the plea of seeking His blessings on the first day of the year which actually falls at the end of spring. When the Lord is looking for His creatures to bless them, they are all missing. When He is to be asleep along with siblings, He is woken up mercilessly. Hindu days do not begin until the Sun rises. The Gregorian New Year happens at midnight at a moment fools term Zero Hour.
Wealthy crooks and fools show off by splurging money and provoking innocent and ignorant masses to follow suit and cause trouble for all.
New Year eve is not the problem. The mad men and women ignoring own culture completely to uphold an unscientific festival is the hurtful issue.
It is time government officials and members of the intelligentsia put their foot down and insist on right things happening rightly.