After several years, Pakistan rediscovers Basant—and now that it is over, the argument is dragged into a tired binary: Hindu festival versus Islamic state. That framing is historically lazy and culturally dishonest.
If the origins of a practice alone were enough to delegitimise its present form, then most of the modern world would have to abandon its calendars, rituals, and seasonal markers. Christmas did not escape its pagan Saturnalia roots. Día de los Muertos openly evolved from Aztec ritual. Yet no one demands Europeans or Latin Americans renounce these traditions to prove ideological purity.
Basant deserves the same civilisational courtesy.
What is happening in Lahore—and across Pakistan more quietly—is not the revival of a Hindu rite. It is the re-assertion of a seasonal, land-based custom that never fully disappeared, even during its formal ban.
