Thread by @PankajSaxena84

1. Why buy Gold/ Silver on Dhanteras?

Tradition is more easily destroyed than understood. Understanding tradition needs deep humility and time, which sadly we don’t invest anymore. In case of Dhanteras, the ritual of buying gold is quite social but significant.

2. While buying gold and silver on #Dhanteras might not have been the original tradition, it has been going on for a while now and it has resulted in a state in which Indian women individually possess a sizable amount of all the gold reserves in the world.

3. This tradition alone has helped India to weather global economic recessions better than other cultures and nations. Even a poor woman with barely a roof over her head in India will often fish out some ornament for an emergency.

4. But tradition is a fragile thing. The secular progressives have been campaigning that women should buy iron instead of gold on Dhanteras. This is not the place to go into the sheer ridiculousness of the suggestion, but such campaigns do have an effect.

5. And if a sizable majority of women decide to do away with their gold reserves handed to them by their parents and accumulated over generations, all of this security and cushion (stree dhana) used against economic recessions will disappear in just one generation.

6. For the secular youth will trade all this 'stupid tradition' in gold for a 'memorable trip to Bali' resulting in hardly more than a collection of horrible selfies. Yes, destruction works that fast.

7. Such is the play of consciousness. A wrong idea can destroy a tradition within a generation.

And THAT is why I will do everything that is done in Diwali, including bursting crackers.

#ShubhDhanteras to all of you.