Twinkle Khanna responds to the anonymous open letter..

Each time someone stands up against patriarchy, regressive traditions, or even pollution for that matter, trolls emerge like sightless earthworms wiggling their bodies in the mud, hoping desperately that some of it will stick onto the recipient of their outrage.

This week, designer Masaba Mantena backed the firecracker ban and what she got in return were slurs that she was illegitimate and against Hinduism. I spoke about Karva Chauth and again the frantic earthworms threw mud on my family, thinking that it would make me bow my head in submission. I cannot stoop to the level where such beings reside as I believe that different perspectives should be presented, clearly and logically. And here is mine.

Karva Chauth is a ritual where a married woman prays for her husband's long life by fasting the entire day. On the surface, a simple ritual, perhaps even a romantic one as you stand on a terrace dressed in your finery under moonlight.

But look beneath the gota-embroidered dupattas and turn over the chhani, and you can see a more complex issue.

It begins with marriage when we say, Your name is more important than mine, so let me change it to yours'. Then we deprive ourselves of food and water out of love, of course, but what we are actually saying is: Your life is more important than mine, so let me fast for you'. The subconscious message to our children is: Your father is more important than I am.' And we pass this down generation after generation.

Is this really the tradition that we want to pass on to our children because this one states that men are more important, their lives have more value? This, in a country where the practice of female infanticide is so widespread that the government had to step in, and make it a criminal offence to disclose the gender of foetuses because we are murdering our girls. According to the 2011 Census, Haryana's sex ratio was so skewed that there were only 861 females to every 1000 males. What happened to the rest of the girls isn't a mystery. But still we propagate a custom where his life is more important than hers.

Now let's move to the crackling topic of the SC's firecracker ban in Delhi. Like me and millions of other children raised in India, Masaba must have celebrated Diwali with new clothes, sweets and the quintessential rockets, anars and phuljharis. But when she supports the ban on firecrackers because of the pollution it creates, the earthworms once again flail desperately, not by quoting statistics or making logical arguments to refute her point but by muck-raking. Don't mess with our ancient traditions,' they say.

I would like to tell them that if we stuck to all our traditions just because they're ancient then we should still be pushing widows into funeral pyres to commit sati and get our children married off at the age of eight.

As much as I would like to see the delight on my daughter's face the same glee I had as a child while bursting atom bombs and laris, it is the present scenario and not nostalgia that must dictate my actions. If even doctors welcome the ban as they feel fumes from firecrackers take pollution levels beyond safe limits, then perhaps we need to change our traditional values and create new ones. If saying that makes me a bad Indian, then so be it.

One of the greatest privileges I have in fact because of the very background that they are trying to smear stems from the fact that I was lucky enough to have a mother who has raised me to believe that equality isn't one of my privileges but it is my right. One that was hard won by some brave and fearless women, women who set the right precedent for other women by standing against inequality

It's not that I don't miss the excitement of a special day, the mock complaining with my friends about starving on Karva Chauth, the allure of standing beneath a moonlit sky with my partner but I cannot propagate a mindset where a man's life is more important than a woman's. If that too makes me a bad Indian, then so be it.
The flailing earthworms do not realize that you cannot shame us by pulling down our mothers, those fiercely independent women who have lived life on their own terms, who have not just talked the talk but walked the walk. Yes, you can reason with us by presenting a logical argument but this seems to be beyond the resources of these anonymous creatures hiding their faces in the mud.

And yes one last thing, for all those claiming to be the flag-bearers of ancient traditions, it would be lovely if you adhered to your so-called traditional ways completely. Why do you write open letters, tweet and troll in the language of the Brits? Why not go traditional there as well, use only our ancient languages and spare us your venom-filled and grammatically incorrect English? Happy Diwali!