NEW DELHI: The festive season brings joy to many. What it also brings is opportunities for the street vendors to earn an income to feel the festive vibe. In Odisha, however, an attempt to earn a living during the Christmas season took a wrong turn.A video going viral from the streets of Odisha shows a group of men bullying street vendors for selling Santa hats. The video, seemingly recorded by one of the men themselves, shows the man dressed in yellow Kurta Pyjama walking out of the car as he goes from one vendor to another, yelling at them for celebrating a foreign festival as he claims the country is “a Hindu country.”“Yeh Hindu rashtra hai. Yahan Christian ka chalega nahin (This is a Hindu rashtra. We won’t tolerate Christian items here),” the man can be heard yelling at the vendors.
The other guy asks the vendor if he is Hindu, then goes on to question, “How can you do all this?” All this while the three men visible on camera continuously pressurise the vendor to stop selling the Santa hats and wind the shop up.The first vendor, trying to get some help by calling someone, then helplessly begins to wrap his shop up.The man dressed then moves on to the second vendor and yells, “ye sab nahi chalega yaha (This won’t do here.)” He then adds that it is the “land of Lord Jagannath” and forces the vendors to “run away.” He also asks them if they can do something else apart from selling the hats, then they should do that.“Isko chhod ke aur kuch kar sakte ho ki nahi? Toh Hindu hokar ye kaise bech rahe ho? (Can you do something other than this? Then, being a Hindu, how are you selling this?)”He then goes on to ask if the vendors have permission to sell the items on the roadside. The vendors, when helplessly nod their heads, the man then tells them to get permission if they want to sell their hats. Later, turning towards the road, visibly urging the passersby, he asks people to shoo the vendors away from the place.The video invited huge criticism from the netizens, as many people shared the video, highlighting that the vendors are selling things to earn a livelihood.A user pointed out the double standard by stating that the guy would not behave in this manner had it been a big showroom or a mall, and is only displaying their power over the poor. “In logo ki himmat nahi hogi ki badi shops and malls me jake ye sab kar k dikhaye sirf garib logo pe hi inka rob chalta hai,” wrote the user.Another user pointed out the importance of living and let live as they wrote, “Livelihood with dignity beats celebrations without empathy—society advances when we respect labour over status!”
