There is something deeply peculiar about India’s secularism discourse. When Hindus celebrate Diwali, they are expected to listen to lectures on pollution, reconsider their traditions and modify the way they celebrate their festivals. When candles are burned, decorative lights are switched on and other forms of festive consumption take place during Christmas, nobody launches a nationwide moral campaign asking Christians to reconsider their celebrations. When thousands of animals are slaughtered during Bakrid, environmental concerns and animal welfare rarely receive the kind of celebrity-driven public sermonising that Diwali attracts.
But the moment somebody questions why Hindus should be lectured about celebrating their own festival, the country’s secular credentials suddenly become a matter of constitutional concern.
The latest example is the Bombay High Court’s intervention in the controversy surrounding actor Dia Mirza’s anti-firecracker video.
On Tuesday, November 3, the Bombay High Court directed the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to restore Mirza’s video promoting an environment-friendly Diwali after the civic body removed it following objections from BJP leaders.
A division bench of Justices Girish Kulkarni and Neela Gokhale expressed displeasure over the comments made by politicians, saying it was “disturbed by the stray comments made by some politicians”.
The court reminded everyone that India is a secular country and observed that environmental protection was an issue affecting everybody, irrespective of religion or caste.
“Everyone is breathing the same air, be it anyone,” the bench remarked.
Fair enough. Everyone does breathe the same air. But does the same principle apply when the environmental consequences of other religious celebrations are discussed?
The court could have confined its intervention to questioning why the BMC selectively removed Mirza’s video while retaining similar appeals featuring Madhuri Dixit, Nishigandha Wad and cricketer Ajinkya Rahane. That would have been a perfectly legitimate question about the civic body’s conduct.
Instead, the court chose to invoke secularism and expressed its hurt over political comments.
The larger question, however, is whether secularism requires Hindus to accept unsolicited instructions on how to celebrate their festivals, or whether environmental responsibility should be applied uniformly across communities.
When Diwali becomes an environmental problem, but other festivals escape similar scrutiny
Every year, as Diwali approaches, a familiar exercise begins. Celebrities, environmental activists and public figures start telling Hindus how they should celebrate their festival.
Firecrackers are targeted, traditional celebrations are questioned, and citizens are reminded that their festivities must conform to the environmental expectations of a select group of self-appointed moral guardians.
There is nothing wrong with discussing pollution caused by firecrackers. Air pollution is a genuine public-health concern, and responsible celebrations are worth encouraging. But why does this environmental consciousness become so conspicuous when Hindus celebrate Diwali?
Consider Christmas. Candles are an integral part of several Christmas celebrations, alongside decorative lighting, plastic decorations, packaging and other forms of festive consumption. Candles themselves have an environmental footprint through the materials used in their production and the emissions generated when they burn. Yet nobody expects the courts to intervene or Bollywood celebrities to produce videos instructing Christians on how they should celebrate Christmas.
Then comes Bakrid, when large numbers of animals are sacrificed as part of religious observances.
The environmental consequences of livestock production are hardly a matter of conjecture. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in its 2023 assessment, estimated that global livestock agrifood systems accounted for approximately 12% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, using 2015 as the reference year. The assessment includes emissions associated with cattle, buffaloes, sheep, goats and other livestock, covering production and supply-chain activities.
This does not mean that all livestock emissions can be attributed to Bakrid. But it does raise legitimate questions about the environmental footprint of large-scale animal consumption and the need to discuss it honestly.
The Animal Welfare Board of India has also repeatedly issued advisories ahead of Bakrid, asking state authorities to prevent illegal animal slaughter, cruelty during transportation and violations of animal welfare laws. Its June 2023 advisory specifically noted that large numbers of animals were likely to be slaughtered during the festival and called for strict enforcement of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and relevant slaughterhouse rules.
The question is simple: why is there no comparable celebrity-led campaign asking people to examine the environmental and animal-welfare implications of large-scale animal consumption?
Why do we not see Bollywood celebrities recording videos asking people to reconsider wasteful consumption or highlighting the environmental footprint of livestock production during Bakrid?
If the argument is that everyone breathes the same air, then surely everyone should be equally accountable for the environmental consequences of their actions.
Environmental responsibility cannot be a one-way street where Hindu traditions are repeatedly scrutinised while other religious practices are treated as subjects that must not be questioned.
Bombay High Court’s secularism argument raises more questions than it answers
The Bombay High Court’s observation that India is a secular country is hardly controversial. What deserves scrutiny is the context in which the observation was made.
The immediate issue before the court was the BMC’s decision to remove a video after political objections. The civic body had commissioned several celebrities to promote an environmentally conscious Diwali in accordance with judicial directions. Mirza’s video was removed while similar messages from other personalities remained available.
The court was justified in questioning this inconsistency.
However, the controversy also raises a question about the judiciary’s approach to public discourse surrounding religious festivals. Why must every objection to an environmental campaign involving Diwali be framed as a threat to secularism?
There is a difference between opposing pollution-control measures and questioning the manner in which those measures are communicated.
People can support cleaner air while also questioning why a particular celebrity should be appointed to tell them how to celebrate a festival that has been part of their civilisational traditions for centuries.
The court’s observation that it had not seen politicians making similar videos about pollution also deserves some perspective. Public representatives are not environmental campaign managers, and their failure to record awareness videos does not invalidate questions about the consistency of celebrity activism.
More importantly, a court’s observations carry considerable moral and institutional weight. Invoking secularism in a dispute over a civic body’s social media campaign risks shifting the discussion away from the actual issue: whether environmental standards and public awareness campaigns are being applied consistently.
Secularism should guarantee equal treatment of communities, not create an expectation that the majority must constantly defend its cultural practices against public lectures.
If a court wants everyone to breathe cleaner air, it should encourage a consistent environmental conversation across communities. It should not allow the impression to grow that Diwali is uniquely deserving of judicial and celebrity-led moral scrutiny.
Dia Mirza: Bollywood’s environmental crusader has her own record of public sermons
The controversy is also an opportunity to revisit Dia Mirza’s much-publicised environmental activism.
Mirza has positioned herself as one of Bollywood’s prominent environmental voices. She has repeatedly spoken about plastic pollution, sustainable living, climate change and the need for ordinary citizens to change their consumption habits.
However, her interventions have often raised questions about the manner in which she approaches environmental activism and whether she understands the realities of the people she chooses to lecture.
In June 2026, Mirza appeared on Soha Ali Khan’s podcast and narrated an incident involving her five-year-old son, Avyaan, and a coconut water delivery worker.
According to Mirza, the delivery worker had brought coconuts packed in plastic bags and accompanied by plastic straws. Her son objected to the packaging and instructed the worker to take the plastic back, saying that plastic was not allowed in their house.
Mirza appeared to take pride in her son’s environmental consciousness and his willingness to stand up against plastic consumption.
But what exactly was the delivery worker supposed to do?
He was simply delivering an order. He was hardly responsible for deciding how the business packaged its products. If Mirza had an objection to plastic packaging, she could have taken it up with the supplier or chosen an alternative arrangement.
Instead, an ordinary delivery worker became the subject of an anecdote about environmental awareness in a celebrity household.
This is precisely where celebrity activism begins to look disconnected from ground realities. People working ordinary jobs do not necessarily have the power to dictate the packaging policies of the businesses they work for. Environmental responsibility also requires an understanding of their economic circumstances.
Then came another remarkable intervention.
During the same podcast appearance, Mirza made sweeping remarks about men being responsible for climate change and declared that patriarchy was the cause of the climate crisis.
“It is the men in this world. It is the men who have driven climate change, and they are totally responsible for the chaos,” she said.
She subsequently clarified that she was referring to patriarchal systems of domination, extraction and consumption rather than blaming every individual man.
Nevertheless, reducing a complicated global crisis involving fossil fuels, industrialisation, deforestation, corporate emissions and government policies to an ideological explanation raises questions about the substance of such environmental commentary.
There is also the larger question of celebrity lifestyles. Environmental responsibility cannot be measured merely by the number of awareness campaigns a celebrity participates in or the number of public lectures she delivers. It must also involve consistency in everyday consumption and an honest assessment of one’s own environmental footprint.
These episodes do not establish that Mirza personally violates every environmental principle she advocates. But they do expose the limitations of her approach and the disconnect between celebrity activism and the realities of ordinary Indians.
The problem is not that Mirza advocates cleaner air or reduced plastic consumption. These are legitimate concerns. The problem begins when environmental advocacy turns into public sermonising, with celebrities assuming the authority to instruct ordinary citizens on how they should live and celebrate their festivals.
Hindus do not need Bollywood celebrities to explain Diwali to them
There is a recurring pattern in India’s public discourse. Diwali is discussed through the prism of air pollution, Holi through water conservation, Ganesh Chaturthi through immersion-related pollution and other Hindu celebrations through questions about noise, safety and environmental damage.
Some of these concerns are legitimate and deserve attention. Hindu communities can and should explore ways to make their celebrations more sustainable.
But why is the same urgency not visible when other religious practices are discussed?
Why should Hindus be expected to accept lectures about firecrackers while questions about the environmental footprint of other festive practices are often conspicuously absent from mainstream celebrity activism?
Why should an actor’s video become an occasion for the Bombay High Court to remind everyone that India is secular, while the broader principle of equal environmental accountability receives so little attention?
There is no reason why Hindus should be exempt from environmental regulations. But neither should their religious traditions become convenient targets for celebrities seeking to demonstrate their environmental credentials.
The BMC was wrong to selectively remove Mirza’s video if its campaign was genuinely based on public-health concerns. The Bombay High Court was entitled to question that decision. But the judiciary should also be mindful that invoking secularism in such controversies can create an impression that questioning celebrity sermons directed at Hindus is somehow incompatible with India’s constitutional values.
Dia Mirza is free to advocate a cracker-free Diwali. Citizens are equally free to question her approach, examine her record and ask why her environmental sermons appear so selective.
And the Bombay High Court is free to insist that public awareness campaigns should not be withdrawn because of political pressure. But it should also recognise that secularism does not require Hindus to surrender their right to question the manner in which their festivals are portrayed or policed.
If everyone breathes the same air, everyone must be held to the same environmental standards. If every festival deserves respect, no community should be singled out for unsolicited moral instruction. And if environmental activism is to command public respect, those who preach it must demonstrate consistency rather than expect unquestioning acceptance of their sermons.
