SANCTIONED ANIMALISM IN INDIAN FESTIVALS LIKE HOLI, MUHARRAM ETC.

Ok, let us set some preliminary guidelines. This analysis, I wish to do in order to put into perspective some observations and not to bring any change or to "destroy" the Indian culture of any sorts. It is also impossible for a single human being to be able to destroy culture as such. Unless you are Karl Marx of course, then you can. But let us not digress here. 

So, Sanctioned animalism in any culture is not very new a concept. In fact, a culture which does not provide space to animal instincts of human beings is not actually a culture anymore. A basic premise of any culture is to "rationalize" the animal instincts as something intrinsically human about them. Indian culture too is no exception to this. 

Let us Talk about Moharram, so that I get a pass to talk about Holi. In Moharram, animal instinct of masochistic pleasures is rationalized in the name of human sorrow. I mean, ok Husain, great man, died and so on but why this torture? I do not subscribe to this premise that it is merely a ritual. It serves to some psychological perversions of society, some everyday psychopathology that couldn't get addressed, gets addressed on Moharram. A masochistic pleasure in beating oneself up, violently. 

Now, let us talk about Holi. This pure animal inside of humans, takes a face up. People rationalize it saying it is one day of pleasure. I have two questions regarding this. First, what happiness you derive tearing apart your and other people's clothes? what pleasure, precisely, is derived while throwing shit and throwing mud and throwing someone into a pit of dump and shit and mud? I say, there is. It is some sort of bestiality. Yes, Bestiality. The gaze of a potential Holi enjoyer before 12 PM, is that of a potential dog or a potential pig, wishing to play with another potential pig. Animal instincts are so hidden inside of humans. When a person sees a dog, running naked in the streets, there comes a deep desire to free oneself up from the shackles of clothes and for once be able to show off his genitals to the surroundings. Why throwing shit and mud? similarly, anything imaginable, a dog eating shit? Don't you want to taste it? A pervert desire to, at least once, taste your own shit or make others lick your shit, isn't it common but nobody speaks about it because it is considered inhuman? It is so funny that there is animalistic stuff that society sanctions thinking but not saying and doing, there are stuff society sanctions doing, but not saying or thinking, and there are stuff society sanctions saying but not doing or thinking. I wish to make a Venn diagram here to explain these rules, often hidden unwritten in any society, be it Indian or any other. 

Do not misunderstand, I am not saying Indian culture is horrible. I mean, all cultures are stupid and that makes them survive for so long. The stupidly adaptive nature of cultures, where an intricate design of rules, which masks the vulgarities as purity, masks the irrational as norms, and the rational as the scientism of it. 

Human wishing to be like animals is very common when we think about animalistic sex positions. I have seen people deliberately making themselves crawl in dirt. Isn't Holi precisely when we want to defy all social norms and it is an outcry of freedom from human of the animal which human has kept captive for so long. 

But, you know, humans do not want to look at it this way. This is the beautiful and hence ugly contradiction. Humans can only be animals via rationalizing it for a one-day thing or a pleasure of simple living argument and so on. They do not like to be called animals. It is as if, sorry for my male chauvinist example, a woman saying to his man, treat me like a bitch without calling me a bitch. 

Do not call me a pig. Come and crawl with me in dirt and do not make me realize what, in essence am I doing. Because, don't you think, we need to be in some sort of half-conscious half dead in pleasure to be able to pull of such a thing like throwing water and dirt on others and on yourself. You are generally half awake when you do this. You deliberately do not wish to be aware of your body that time, because if you do, you will not be able to do it. This happens in sex as well. When you analyze it objectively, what are you doing? You are penetrating your penis (An organ with which you urinate) in the hole or say whatever, or a woman, woman, who you considered so beautiful a little while ago. You are seeking to destroy the beauty yourself. Do you do this to a flower? Put a penis inside of it to destroy it? Where did the purity notion go here? Why do you wash hands after peeing? Why then to pollute someone's organ with the so-called impure piss mixed semen. 

 So, you see what I am doing. I want to establish this. Any culture, however pure it may show itself to you, has to provide occasions of outbursts of animalism to survive as a culture, and on top it, a rationalizing justification as to why is it there in the first place. Just check what happens in the evening of Holi, people bathe, come out wearing clean clothes. Use safe dry colors and worship feet of elders and so on. All very pious looking and pure. What if, say for once, this last phase is deemed not allowed? Do you know what will happen? Humans will succumb to guilt. The guilt and shame of animalism. 

So, the evening ritual serves as a balancing act. A sort of purifying that look, after all this monstrosity and animalism, how pure and beautiful and social and civilized as a society we are. Is this hypocrisy? Yes. Is this right? May be yes, because what else would you do? I think just an awareness about this is enough that cultures are not something pure absolutely. We are, at the end animals in denial.