Anti-Hindu propaganda isn’t only found on Netflix and in Bollywood movies — starts right from primary school.
NCERT’s Class 2 English textbook, which is read by millions of children across the country, criticizes Diwali firecrackers while not touching on the negative aspects of the festivals of other faiths, Twitter account Gems of Books has discovered. “Meena doesn’t like firecrackers because they make noise and produce harmful smoke,” a line in a section on Diwali titled “The festivals of India” says.
In comparison, festivals of other faiths don’t carry similar criticisms. The section on Eid speaks about how the family breaks their fast and how “everyone is happy”, while the section on Christmas speaks of how the family decorates their house and wears new clothes.
The myth of Diwali crackers causing significant amounts of pollution has been repeatedly debunked. A detailed paper on the issue says that Diwali firecrackers cause a “small” increase in PMI 2.5 particles of just 40 micrograms on average, which is tiny compared to the average pollution in Delhi at the time. Other festivals too cause pollution — the rearing of animals which are sacrificed on Eid also contributes to global warming, and their often public executions also causes distressing scenes of blood and gore on Indian roads. Christmas trees, for their part, cause deforestation if they’re real, and are often made of plastic and cancer-causing materials if they’re artificial.
But the fact that’s hammered into India’s children, right from the age of 8, is that only Diwali crackers are harmful. This can’t but have a scarring effect on young minds, prejudicing them against Hinduism with its ‘harmful’ practices, and in favour of other faiths, which apparently have no such regressive beliefs. It’s a clever trick that it’s leftist ecosystem has cultivated to indoctrinate young Indians against Hinduism, but what’s most distressing is that such bigotry hasn’t been corrected in over seven years by BJP’s supposed pro-Hindu government.