I assume you are talking about Diwali. So tell me which community mocks it or makes a communal issue out of it? AFAIK, a lot of Muslims and Christians also buy crackers and use them. The factories that make them are also controlled by people of all communities. The point there is that pollution is not a personal choice as your actions have a wider impact on everyone irrespective of community. The govt thinks that check on pollution is important enough that we have pollution checks for vehicles.
The people who protest against rampart and uncontrolled pollution which raises to 5 times the normal levels during Diwali season do so irrespective of which community they belong to. They are against pollution and not against Diwali. The people who become sick or die are not just the minority communities but Hindus as well. What has crackers even got to do with Diwali in the first place. I don't remember reading anything about people lighting crackers when Lord Krishna got rid of Narakasura or Lord Rama got rid of Ravana. Diwali is meant to be a festival of lights and can be celebrated quite well without the over excess that we see today. If anything, over the years, people have bastardized this festival from what it was supposed to be.
Even in a democracy, your rights are expected to cease when they start impinging on the rights of others. Despite so many people dying due to breathing and allergy related issues or becoming sick, was ever any remedy even considered by the govt leave alone a extreme setup like a total ban?
Then you also say that ban on beef or trying to ban meat during non Hindu festivals might be in retaliation to people protesting against pollution. So tell me, is anyone forcefully shoving beef down the throat of people who don't want to eat it? What you eat is a personal choice. How is cow slaughter effecting everyone in a way that cannot be controlled without resorting to total ban ? We don't see the govt put ban on chicken and other fowl even when bird flu is spreading and peoples lives are at risk, so what is the justification for ban on beef?
Everywhere that ban on beef has been demanded, it is on the basis of "preservation" of Indian culture or Hindu culture. In courts, they may grasp at straws trying to portray as if its has some other meaningful and logical reason, but as far as the proposals/demands in the public go, its always has been in relation to religion or culture.
Faith is a matter of personal choice and should be kept just as private as your privates. There is no problem in people having faith in whatever God they want or not having faith in any at all. But when people start getting involved with religions, rational thinking goes for a toss and people start reveling in stupid things like these. Religion is stupid and so are the people who feel the need to cling to them and there is no dearth of people who take advantage of such stupidity for their own advantage. That is what's happening here. The ruling leaders pull these sort of gimmicks to get the Hindu vote bank and some other Muslim leader would be busy trying to rile up Muslims to get their votes.
