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"If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work."
— William Shakespeare in Henry IV
A controversy erupted on Sunday after the Goa government scrapped Gandhi Jayanti on October 2 from the list of public holidays. Soon, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar clarified, saying the omission could be an act of "mischief" or a "typing mistake".
The incident triggered some angry reactions, especially from the Congress, which termed it as an "anti-national act".
Congress leader PC Chacko said: "BJP's mindset is a very sick mindset. Can any state government take a decision like this? This kind of decision they have taken is anti-national. I am still in shock after hearing about this. No government in India has the right to do that. This is a very senseless [sic] decision which they have taken."
Similarly, a BJP leader said: "I am shocked by this [removal of Oct 2 from the holiday list]. You cannot disrespect the Father of the Nation."
How is this decision "anti-national"? or "shocking" or "senseless", for that matter? And how on earth is it a "disrespect" to Mahatma Gandhi? I am all for making October 2 a full working day. Here is why:
First, not every Indian citizen gets leave on Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary. How can one set of people enjoy a day off but not others? It can't be that he was not the Father of the Nation to those who work on that day.
Secondly, why do we need leave on Gandhi Jayanti? For what? To celebrate? Ok, fine. We should celebrate the birth anniversary of a great leader. But do we need an entire day for that? And do most people who enjoy the holiday set aside even a minute to remember him?
For me, the answers to all the questions above are in the negative. Many people will disagree with me and even want to send verbal bullets my way. So, let me play safe and hide behind Congress leader and former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru because both of us are on the same page.
In his book, Nehru: The Invention of India, Shashi Tharoor writes: "In April 1923, Jawaharlal [Nehru] found himself elected chairman of Allahabad Municipal Board. Unprepared for office, Jawaharlal at first grumbled that it would distract him from the national cause, but he soon took to the job and performed creditably, earning a reputation for hard work... and a refusal to play the patronage game. He cut through much of the self-serving cant that surrounded officialdom, refusing to declare a holiday on the anniversary of the Amritsar Massacre because he believed that the staff were more interested in a holiday than in mourning the tragedy...."
See? That was one big shield I hid behind.
The bottom line is that even if the omission of October 2 from the list of holidays in Goa was a clerical error, it should not be corrected and the rest of the country might be better off removing that day from the holiday list. And why only Gandhi Jayanti? In fact, November 14 — Jawaharlal Nehru's birth anniversary — should also be deleted. If Nehru did not want the anniversary of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre as a holiday, would he have appreciated people turning his own birthday into an excuse to not go to work?
If you want to take leave, please go ahead by all means. But why should one be allowed to do that in the name of a respected leader?
