Whenever a Hindu festival is around the corner, our ‘secular, liberal, intellectuals’ go through their checklist of propaganda. The checklist has a designated tag for each Hindu festival. some of the most popular tags are patriarchy, animal rights and pollution. Recently, even Hindu terrorism tag is in fashion. While Karwa Chauth and Rakshabandhan come under patriarchy, Diwali and Holi come under pollution, Jallikattu and some other regional festivals are for animal rights activism. Interestingly, the checklist goes missing and liberals turn on their ‘silent mode’ when festivals of other religions are being celebrated. No liberal sheds tears for the slaughtered goats on Bakrid and no “liberal” gets hurt over chopped off trees on Christmas.
On Sunday, most Indians celebrated Rakshabandhan, a celebration of the familial bond between sisters and brothers. As expected, the checklist was out. Patriarchy was the tag of the day and liberals were Tweeting and sharing their contempt for the festival. All India Bakchod, the comedy group that does more politics and less comedy shared a post titled ‘Raksha Bandhan and patriarchy’ on their Facebook page.
The short post argued patriarchy has managed to ‘f@#% around’ with everything good, bad or ugly our culture has to offer. It also claimed patriarchy has made Rakshabandhan a festival about a brother protecting his sister. It argued brothers should stop taking the moral high ground and being the hero. They should only support their sisters as they try to change the system.
Facebook users, however, did not seem to find the post funny or valid. Most of the comments called out the hypocrisy of AIB and the misogynist stand of its promoters. Clearly, the tagging of an innocent Hindu festival that celebrates the sibling bonds with all its colours as ‘patriarchy’ did not go down well with many Facebook users. Comments on the Facebook post made it clear. Here are some samples.
Not only girls, even boys found the post low on truth and high on hypocrisy. Some Facebook users dug out AIB promoter Tanmay Bhat’s objectionable statements.
Even on Twitter, many users called out their maligning propaganda against every Hindu festival.
according to AIB and buzzfeed Rakshabandhan reflects patriarchy and patriarchy is the reason why women are unsafe, not the sexists and paedophile jokes Tanmay tweets and Rega Jha laughs upon.
— ? (@AndColorPockeT) August 28, 2018
Not only AIB, maligning Rakshabandhan with the patriarchy tag was done by many others too. Twitter users too, had their share of ‘rakhi phobia’ which they promptly called out like their Facebook counterparts.
Even as a feminist I don’t understand why protectiveness has to be equated with machismo. You don’t feel protective towards someone because they NEED to be protected. You just do – out of love. Men, women, children, animals – everyone feels protective of their dear ones. https://t.co/QAH0PGpjNm
— Shuchi Singh Kalra (@shuchikalra) August 27, 2018
Feminism has long been misused by a certain brand of self-proclaimed liberals as a tool to laugh at traditional practices. Interestingly, these liberals tend to maintain a stunned silence on real issues that women all over the world have to face. They do not raise their voices against practices like FGM, religious oppression and polygamy but never miss a single chance to malign traditional harmless practices that celebrate love and harmony. Thankfully, social media users often call the propaganda out and dare to hold a mirror to the hypocrites. From the looks of it, the millennial generation is not entirely lost to fake feminist liberal activism after all.
