Chhath Puja reflects the bonding between humans and nature; it reflects concern for climate; it is an iconic ambassador of sustainability; it bridges the inequality gap;... Alok Singh
Puja without a pujari is Chhath Puja. Chhath Puja, without any specific idols, is a Puja. Chhath Puja, without a particular location, is a Puja. Chhath Puja, without any permission, is a Puja. The four-day Chhath festival starts with bathing and eating rice and salted vegetables of bottle gourd in the evening. The second day of the festival permits the devotee to eat sweetened kheer and roti once in the evening, and after this, nothing is to be consumed, not even a drop of water, till the end of the festival. The third day of the festival is devoted to the setting sun, and the last day of the festival is dedicated to worshiping the rising sun.
The puja’s glorification rises as communities gather on the riverside or at any waterbody. All the ingredients and efforts are homemade and/or directly derived from nature, such as raw fruits. It is a festival that depends on no imported products; we can say it’s one even a Chinese company couldn’t encroach on to monetize their products.
Anyone, anywhere can perform Chhath Puja on their own by maintaining the sanctity required for its performance.
It’s easier said than done. So, the family and the society come together to perform their dharma. Every individual, whether fasting for the festival or not, has a self-imposed duty to maintain the sanctity of the festival. An individual can’t maintain the sanctity or make other operational preparations on their own. It’s tough to do alone.
The prowess of society, i.e., Samaj, is reflected in cleanliness. Everyone is responsible for consistently cleaning not only their house and campus, but also the roads and lanes in their neighbourhood. The cleanliness is better than that of the freshly cleaned work done by the local municipal bodies on any other day. The cleanliness during Chhath Puja by the Samaj is much better than that of government agencies. Statutory laws do not have a role in this cleanliness. All the cleanliness efforts are voluntary and spontaneous and not imposed out of fear of monetary penalties or concern about being ostracized in the community. This is because of our soft power. Chhath Puja is a reflection of our soft power.
Soft power is more important than hard power. We got our Ram Mandir in Ayodhya after a struggle lasting almost 500 years. It was soft power that kept enlightening the belief that we will have the Ram Mandir again someday. The worship continued, the devotee never stopped visiting; the only difference is that today we are worshipping again in the sanctum sanctorum. There were times when worshipping was performed from afar, how far doesn’t matter, whether it’s a kilometre or more or less. But there was always someone who kept the light of soft power burning. And that someone was not the ruler, not the politicians, not the judiciary, that someone was the local general public and the holy sadhus and sanyasis. A consistent struggle and hope for a mandir for five hundred years, that’s the supremacy of soft power. Our belief is our soft power. Our culture is our soft power. Soft power shapes what we think, what we eat, what we read, and what we preach, and preaching is not limited to religious matters. Soft power is our music, our cinema, our paintings, our architectural designs, our ancient structures, and much more.
Unfortunately, the soft power of our country needs to be safeguarded, as we are the victims of attacks that allow others to demean and degrade it. The Chinese, the Japanese, and others could preserve their soft power while we failed. Much of the blame for the degradation of our soft power lies with Macaulay’s education system. This happened as we participate in the English education system, and today we are more butchered in our soft power in foreign universities.
Today, the Americans earn a lot of foreign exchange from us by selling their degrees. The Western world is struggling with demographic disadvantage; American universities do not have enough domestic students, so they are allowing international students to enrol. Last year, more than 365,000 Bharatiya students took admission in American universities. And our students in American universities are easy prey to the Western soft power.
The American accounting firm Grant Thornton, operating in Bharat, has rebranded as Grant Thornton Bharat. Earlier, it was known as Grant Thornton India. During the 2023 G20 summit, the host country printed the invitation as ‘Bharat’ instead of ‘India’. This was a demonstration of our soft power. And it was well understood by an American company that, if it saw an opportunity to get more business than its peers, it had to rebrand itself from Grant Thornton India to Grant Thornton Bharat. The American companies are responding one step ahead and take soft power very seriously.
The weakened soft power of our students in foreign university campuses is a concern. Indologists Sri. Rajiv Malhotra has flagged this attitude and behaviour for decades. He is located at Princeton. He earlier worked as a scientist and businessperson, recognized the dangers, and devoted his life to firewalling Bharatiya soft power across history, literature, philosophy, language, culture, and more. Soft power has many dimensions, including music, cinema, and paintings and the arts. We realized very late that soft power needs the attention of our policymakers.
Our government is working to have the Chath Puja recognized as cultural heritage by the United Nations. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) can also be understood as a gatekeeper of soft power.
Chhath Puja reflects the bonding between humans and nature; it reflects concern for climate; it is an iconic ambassador of sustainability; it bridges the inequality gap; it demonstrates community ownership; it acknowledges the sun god as the universal source of energy; it also kindles the idea of the existence of life on many other galaxies, and many more elaborations can be universalized.
(Alok Singh has a doctorate in management from the Indian Institute of Management Indore and is a promoter of Transition Research Consultancy for Policy and Management.)
