Each year in perhaps the past 7 or 8 years there has been a serious increase in the number of articles, and the promotion of them, discussing why kitniyot should be allowed nowadays even for Ashkenazi Jews at least in Eretz Yisrael. This year I seemed to sense less of a discussion about kitniyot and fewer articles and arguments, though I also seemed to sense, without taking a survey or a poll, an increase in the number of Ashkenazi people I am in contact with that are eating kitniyot on Pesach.
I personally have found the logic in the arguments very compelling. Despite that I will not be eating kitniyot on Pesach. At least not this year, and I doubt I will change that tradition until there is a mass acceptance by a consensus of rabbonim on the matter.
Pesach is all about tradition. Some people do the craziest things on Pesach out of tradition. Pesach is all about doing crazy and unusual things, many of which have become tradition, just so that the "children will ask". We do things different on Pesach. We do not just do what is logical and what makes sense. We even have the main feature, or one of them at least, of the Pesach seder of children asking why we do things so differently on pesach, and the answers are not very specific. The answers talk about slavery and freedom, not explain why we dip or recline. There is something about doing things differently on pesach.
Does the ban on kitniyot make any sense nowadays? Perhaps not. An argument can easily be made that the time for such a ban is long gone, at least in Eretz Yisrael. But why must I break with a tradition that is hundreds of years old? Just to eat some hummus on pesach, or maybe some rice? Is there anyone out there that cannot survive a week without hummus or beans or rice? I know I can, and I have no interest in breaking a tradition that is hundreds of years old just so that I will be able to smear some hummus on my matza.
More or less, this is the same reason why I do not eat all the foods that have been around in the past 10 or 15 years that are made to replicate "real" foods, such as Pesach rolls and Pesach pasta and the like. I enjoy eating Pesach food for the week. The point of the holiday is to be different than the rest of the year, and I am fine with the food reflecting that. As I said about kitniyot - I can survive a week. It is just a week, not forever. And as someone said to me, our grandparents, and even more so their grandparents, did just fine for the week with far less than what we have available to us. A week without kitniyot or rolls is easily survivable. It is definitely, in my mind, not worth giving up hundreds of years of tradition for the payoff of a bowl of rice.
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