With Ramadan drawing to a close, we are now to celebrate Eid. This year our festival of Eid is sorrowful as till date we have lost 65 innocent lives across the valley.  As a result of these killings caused by the current uprising, we have more widows and orphans besides parents losing their children. Thousands of people have been injured and hundreds of them are behind the bars. The estimate of financial losses exceeds billion of rupees. It is such a colossal human tragedy that our valley shall not be able to recover from the loss for a long time. Each and every segment of the valley displayed exemplary spirit of solidarity, harmony, unity and oneness by pooling funds, helping the needy, taking essential day to day commodities to the hospitals, providing medical aid to the victims and donating blood so as to save the precious lives. All this is really very commendable and it will really help us win the favour of Allah. However, there is still a lot to be done and we should not forget that our duty and moral responsibility has ended with that. Now the Eid is approaching and the best way we can pay homage to the martyred ones is to celebrate Eid with simplicity and austerity besides depositing Sadqa-e-Fitr, Zakat and generous donations. There are many leaders who have also made a fervent appeal to all Kashmiris not to celebrate Eid in a pompous and extravagant manner. And it is really a testing time for all of us to prove that our conscience is not dead but alive and we share the suffering and pain of all those who died in the current uprising. This is how we can discharge our national and societal and moral responsibilities. Let us all make a solemn pledge that this time we will not go for indiscriminate purchases of bakery items, clothes, multiple meat dishes and crackers.  Normally this should have been our lifestyle throughout, but because of our faulty understanding of Islam, we have not adhered to its principles.

In Islam extravagant life style is not allowed and we are always supposed to behave and act with responsiblity.  We cannot celebrate our joy and happiness in a beastly and devilish manner.  In fact the holy month of Ramadan could be taken as a kind of training period in which we learn to control our desires, get increasingly conscious about our own self and our duties towards others.  The essence of this holy month is that there has to be some marked change in us at the end of it and it should be reformative and transformative in nature. To observe fast is not a mere ritual for us but has been made mandatory on us, of course with exceptions, so that we learn to exercise self restraint and keep a check on our desires.  And it is highly unbecoming of all of us to exercise it in the month of Ramadan and throw it to winds as soon as it is over.  It s a matter of serious concern and we cannot afford to compromise on it by giving in to the hedonistic lifestyle. Besides this, it is also important for us to understand that we cannot play hide and seek with Almighty Allah and claim to be very pious and virtuous. He is omniscient and he knows what is in our hearts. We all agree that perfection humanly is not possible but the fact of the matter is that we are far from being even good as far as our deeds and actions are concerned because we are grossly rooted in materialism (Mada Parasti) and that is the religion we follow in practice. This is perhaps one of the reasons that we suffer at present at the hands of oppressors.  We are Muslims by chance and not by choice and that is why there is a huge gap between what we say and what we do. As Alama Iqbal puts it rightly:
                   There is a loud talk that Muslims have disappeared from the earth’s face.
                   We ask you; did true Muslims exist anywhere in any place?
                   Your style of living is Christian, your culture that of the Hindu;
                   A Jew would be ashamed if he saw Muslims such as you
                   You are Saiyyads as well as Mirzas, and you are Afghans-
                   You are all these, but tell us are you Mussalmans?  
    
The holy month of Ramadan is almost over and those of them who took the maximum advantage out of it not by simply praying and reciting the holy Quran but more importantly, by understanding the message of the Holy Scriptures, are really blessed ones, as they  might have found a remarkable change in them as individuals. To make a change in the society, we all need to change ourselves first as the fate of society cannot be changed overnight.

Let us all pledge that we will make this Eid-ul-Fitr simple and austere.  This is the least we can do, as we have lost around 65 innocent lives. Let's not forget them while we celebrate our Eid.

(Dr Tasleem Ahmad War is Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Kashmir)

Lastupdate on : Fri, 3 Sep 2010 21:30:00 Mecca time
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