What’s Diwali without a bit of fireworks?
India’s Supreme Court this week banned the sale of fireworks in Delhi and its suburbs, aka the National Capital Region (NCR). It is the latest in a series of directions concerning high pollution in the NCR. As usual, opinion is polarised. The uberurban are happy; Delhi’s pollution is so bad, especially during winters, that it has overtaken Beijing as the world’s worst in this regard. The tradition-minded are dismayed that another memory associated with extended family joy has been snatched away: “Why don’t they also ban Christmas trees?” they bitterly complain, countering judicial overreach with logical overreach.
Are fireworks a part of Hindu tradition? Deepawali celebrates Lord Rama’s return to Ayodhya, but fireworks were invented by the Chinese hundreds of years after Valmiki wrote the Ramayana. In independent India fireworks were produced in Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu, at factories that employed children in defiance of UN conventions. Now fireworks are produced in China, and the quality is poor. Also, India does not regulate the use of fireworks, unlike the US, which requires a licence to handle fireworks, which is why the fireworks’ displays on America’s Independence Day are undertaken by large companies or by professionals contracted by local government (watching fireworks in America is thus a community event).
My first Diwali in India, when I was seven, was my first experience of fireworks. It was a fantastic discovery. Each relative liked a different firework and perhaps you can tell something about a boy who likes rockets or a boy who likes bombs. Since I loved space travel, I disliked firework-rockets for their lame nature, and bombs were merely a nuisance. Sparklers, however, afforded a close view of the magic of combustion and chemical reaction. When I returned to India, a colleague at the Times of India and I made our own fireworks. We bought the powder, the small pots, the aluminium filling, the igniting chemical, etc., from Old Delhi’s wholesale market, and spent several nights after work producing about 10 dozen anaar, or “flowerpots”, the firework that is like a fountain of light. We did this for a couple of years till I got married. When my children were old enough, we would go the day before Diwali to the wholesale market to buy cartons of fireworks. Despite the cruel practices of the Sivakasi industry, they produced good-quality fireworks; one year I foolishly bought a small box of
The ban on fireworks, perhaps wellintentioned, was yet another hijacking of executive privilege
“flowerpots” made in China, and one of them exploded as I lit it. There was a blinding flash but fortunately I wear glasses. The fingers of my right hand suffered burns and my wife had to drive me to the hospital. The blisters remained for weeks and my fingers remained discoloured for several years.
At some point my children began coming home from school and shouting, “Say no to crackers!” And so we had to reduce our annual binges though I suspect my son still took a subversive interest in sneaking off with me to buy fireworks. In fact, the four years that we lived in Chennai we found that the locals set off their fireworks the morning of Diwali; so we would wait till the afternoon when the prices were slashed to buy ours, because we anyway celebrated at night. But six years in coastal Chennai and Mumbai shielded us from the worst pollution, and returning to the NCR we found less people bursting crackers. The net effect was that the air contained less smoke but the downside was that mosquitoes began surviving Diwali (the smoke used to drive them off or kill them during previous years).
It is difficult to take a stand on the matter because fireworks to me mean joy and celebration, but during the winter of 2015-16 Delhi became the planet’s most polluted city, which is no small thing. Foreign correspondents were constantly writing stories about the sacrifices their children were making for their posting. One major newspaper’s editor, from a foreign country, found the management unwilling to renew his contract so he publicly announced that he could no longer afford to subject his children to the health hazards of Delhi’s air and promptly left for the West. Of course, one night of fireworks is not the main reason for pollution but a contributor: rampant industrial units, proliferating SUVs, and the rampant burning of wheat stubble in neighbouring Punjab are the chief reasons that Delhi’s air is poisonous.
My objection to the Supreme Court’s decision, however, is that the judiciary’s job is to interpret the law, not to make it. It has lately made standing up for the national anthem at a cinema hall mandatory, which is just silly. If people want comprehensive action to stop damaging the environment and harming their health, they ought to lobby for legislation. The ban on fireworks, perhaps well-intentioned, was yet another hijacking of executive privilege.
Aditya Sinha is a senior journalist based in India