How Eid Has Become a Victim of Corporate Insensitivity: A Case Study

I am writing this article in the hope that my India becomes a country where multiculturalism doesn't get lip service but is followed in letter and spirit, like the picture above. But how will this be possible if they are not given the chance to share and celebrate together.

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Every time I look up a corporate leave calendar in India, I am left disappointed. As usual there is no holiday on Eid, the biggest festival of the biggest minority of India. This has been one consistent fact since I started working in the private sector for the past decade or so. This absence is in stark contrast to other festivals which get their due (Holi, Diwali, etc.) and sometimes more than their due (Christmas clubbed with New Year’s becomes a week-long vacation period). Despite the misgivings people have of the government sector, Eid is a gazette holiday in all state documents. Perhaps, this is one instance in which the establishment has somewhat strived to maintain its secular credentials.

Besides the loss that I feel of an annual leave for Eid festivities, there is a larger point that needs to addressed. Why is there such a treatment despite a large number of the population celebrating the festival? Is it deliberate or is it pure indifference? Whenever I have questioned the reasons, I always got a few lame ones, which are as follows:

A few companies have a system of optional holidays and Eid is one of them. For example, every employee is given a couple of optional leaves which he can opt for any day. Eid is clubbed with other minor or regional festivals or it is at times the sole member of the club. Those who don’t opt are expected to turn up. When I raised a query, the general reasons given are: We have too few Muslim employees.

Some corporates are even more indifferent: they have a no leave policy for Eid, so one needs to apply for a leave in order to avail a holiday on that day. These don’t even bother to assign a reason. Good fortune or bad, I have worked for both kinds of companies.

Is Eid meant to be celebrated only the Muslims? In isolation?

I disagree with whatever scant explanation is given. Not according significance to the most popular festival of 20% of the country’s population (India has the world’s third largest Muslim population) is just snubbing them in the nose. Focusing on that is missing the larger point. My contention is even if there is no Muslim employee in an organization, still there should be a compulsory off for everyone. People have to know how their own countrymen celebrate the festival and participate. There is a very healthy tradition of people visiting each other’s houses during Eid. Sometimes, even strangers turn up. No one is ever sent back. They are all accorded the same respect.

Not acknowledging this fact is extremely short-sighted behavior and in the long term it is injust and unfair treatment to such a large part of the population. There is a reason why I say this. If a person gets leave for Christmas, are they expected to celebrate only with their own community members? Don’t people, not belonging to the community, equally partake of the festivities? And that is how it should be. When you don’t give an off to my Christian or Hindu colleague, you are primarily preventing those people from sharing my joy on this day and you are telling me that is my festival and that I should celebrate it with only my people.

No sense of social responsibility and fostering communal harmony

This is against India’s pluralistic ethos. The idea should always be to get the entire society together and help them celebrate and rejoice. This is particularly important for a culturally and ethnically diverse country like India. If one expects all citizens to appreciate the multi-cultural ethos of the country, then they have to learn to appreciate things that happen in all other communities, maybe that’s why books on social sciences teach about the various festivals celebrated in India with the same emphasis.

This has to be attitude if communities have to live and coexist peaceful. The natural mutual suspicion has to be broken. This is why the USA celebrates Diwali; it is not because Indians are in huge numbers but to give their own people an opportunity to appreciate their neighbors and friends and share their happiness and joy and form a society which is tolerant of all its members.

We need to understand multiculturalism and strengthen it

An attitude against it particularly doesn’t behoove a set-up like India, which has the world’s biggest Muslim population. It is high time, the corporates and big companies started facilitating policies that truly reflect the country’s pluralistic ethos, rather than paying lip service to social responsibility. Not doing that would mean abdicating their responsibility towards communal harmony and peaceful coexistence. Something, that our country, which has often seen communal tensions, can ill afford. If there is a rupture in the secular fabric of the nation, there are equally culpable.