Of a new cultural possibility
   Date :03-Sep-2020

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By Vijay Phanshikar:
 
THE city of Nagpur must thank itself for celebrating the Ganesh festival, Onam, and Moharram in the most responsible manner. In the given coronavirus pandemic condition, there were obvious curbs in public celebrations, which the people followed with a sense of duty as individuals and as community. This collective behaviour needs heart-felt appreciation as the city presented to the world the picture of a dignified place inhabited by right-thinking people.
 
Right from the time devotees brought home the idols of Lord Ganesh to the time when they immersed those, there was a very laudable sense of social discipline. There were no major violations of official norms put in place by the administration six months ago. True, there were a few demonstrative people who wanted to show off their celebrations. But such examples were very small in number since the larger society often respected the norms and even ensured their good implementation everywhere. It must be stated that historically the city often boasted of loud celebrations of Ganesh festival -- massive idols, massive rallies, deafening and raucous music, shrill mantras and shlokas of Ganesh puja aired on loudspeakers used to be the standard practices that actually were uncharacteristic to the nature of the festival started so wisely by Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak more than a century ago. There used to be only very few intellectually-oriented cultural programmes (in increasingly reducing numbers).
 
This year, however, thanks to the ‘new normals’ in place, Nagpur’s society kept itself in a wonderful check as it celebrated Ganesh festival, Onam and Moharram. So good has the overall effect been that one tends to pray to the larger society to continue in the same manner even the current pandemic is over in the next some time. May the city establish newer definitions of all such celebrations so that the social and environmental pollution is kept at the lowest, and the quality of communal assimilation is enhanced in an ascending scale.
 
Encouraged by the fine manner of celebrations this year, one feels like suggesting that the city should accept a new cultural practice of intermittent lock-downs or social curfews not lasting beyond a week on a periodic basis so that the city underlines the emergence of a new social order. Such a practice will improve the city’s persona in multiple ways that we may not be able to imagine at this stage. Let us give a serious thought to such a possibility.