One hundred and eighty million Muslims in India have been ignored on lord Jagannath’s overhyped Car Festival day. Shockingly, a leading, so-called secular Odia daily too did not even have two words of good wishes for Muslims on their holy festival of Eid.
What has moved many on July 6 is the fact that a popular, ethically spotless butcher making good meat available to carnivores among Hindus felt lost because of the overwhelmingly huge preparations for the Puri Rath Yatra, which, over the years, has only given rise to chaos, boosted servitors’ greed and attracted more people than Puri can contain on a single day. law and Order ADG Satyajit Mohanty says unless crowd management is managed with precision management methods, disasters are bound to happen.
Surprisingly, no big political executive has wished in any form ‘good wishes’ to Muslims on their most sacred religious event. The believably secular Chief Minister kept attending Car Festival meetings but never uttered a word to put officials on toes to keep the Muslims and people of other faiths happy in Odisha, especially in the wake of the Car Festival frenzy.
last year, the greedy, meat-eating and alcohol-guzzling lowly servitors got exposed so badly that the Cuttack citizens, who accorded them rousing welcome and sent off with generously lavish monetary dole-outs, did realise soon that the greedy non-priestly servitors had cheated the Hindu world by brazenly making the most-sensitively confidential and secret rituals open to public with the sole view to robbing money by deceitful means. The chief administrator of the temple too let them have their ways. later, after the Brahma transfer chaos turned sensationally big, the same admirers turned so bitter that in Cuttack alone thousands of them carried effigies of leading Daitas and burnt them after kicking, slapping, prodding, pricking and punching the inanimate bodies to their hearts’ content for the crooks had hurt the Hindu community’s sentiment too badly.
Interestingly, the loudmouths among them had kept bluffing to the gullible souls that the Brahma transfer happens in the middle of the night in complete darkness while strange female spirits keep weeping, screeching and screaming frighteningly, though not able to rattle the brave hearts who are close relatives of the deities. But after being charged for cheating, the same shameless guys vomited the truth that all these rituals are done when the sun is high up in the skies and people watching from higher locations outside the temple. Ever since that incident, the Daitas have remained away from much public glare out of fear because they were virtually crushed to garbage grade through the ‘effigy burning episode in Cuttack, before TV cameras. Community insiders say most of the brags, including one who is a BJD member, cannot spell the word ‘university’ as they are school dropouts only.
Most unfortunately, the incumbent chief administrator, who used to be a strong administrator once upon a time, is a compromising official today. The ‘high integrity’ tag too has gone since long. In the last deity touching-scraping disaster, he gave a clean cheat to the Daitas. Not once did he say the greedy offenders of law may have incited the stupid outside devotees to commit the sin for personal interests. The Chief Minister only expected to ensure law and order, epidemic control and crowd management and never said a word on communal harmony because of Eid falling on the same day.
Only a few days ago, a criminal-minded Daita was caught gambling, and the police released him on bail. Again the same guy swung a chair down on a doctor’s head to land in custody with charges of attempt to murder. Puri incidentally has a same batch DM-SP team doing wonders. The administration ensured law took its own course and the criminal was slapped with grave charges. But surprisingly, the doctor beater is out on bail. Another self-styled larger-than-life Daita, already in soup for offending the monarch and the seer, has slipped into bigger trouble now as two of his unruly sons snatched away some object of the deities which belonged to the whole community. The young members are now adamant that the two arrogant fellows be suspended, or else there shall be no cooperation during the important ritual processes on the rarest of rare Eid-Rath Yatra day.
Hindus and Christians need to appreciate the practices and tenets of Islam including Eid. Islam means self-surrender to Allah, the God. The Quran means ‘recitation’ and it is the core religious text considered to be ‘God’. Mahammad was only a prophet preacher.
The commendable religious duties true Muslims perform:
Salat: Ritual prayer five times a day, the precise body movements being as important as the mind; can be performed anywhere provided one faces the “Qibla,” in the direction of Islam’s most sacred mosque in Mecca.
Zakat: Compulsory charity for the poor, assessed at 2.5 per cent of capital assets (items such as bank deposits but not possessions such as cars or houses).
Sawm: Fasting from dawn to sunset during the month of Ramadan (the ninth month of the lunar calendar).
Hajj: Pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime if he or she is able; the hajj takes place during the last ten days of the twelfth lunar month.
Some of the great practical prayers during the Ramzan days:
“Allah, grant me wisdom and awareness, keep me away from foolishness and pretention, grant me a share in every blessing You send down, by You generosity, O the most Generous; let me have mercy on the orphans, and feed [the hungry], and spread peace, and keep company with the noble-minded; make me love goodness, and dislike corruption and disobedience, bar me from anger and the fire (of Hell), by Your help, O the helper of those who seek help; make me love goodness, and dislike corruption and disobedience, bar me from anger and the fire (of Hell), by Your help, O the helper of those who seek help; grant me compatibility with the good, keep me away from patching up with the evil, lead me in it, by Your mercy, to the permanent abode, by Your Godship, O the God of the worlds; wash away my sins, purify me from all flaws, examine my heart with (for) the piety of the hearts, O One who overlooks the shortcomings of the sinners.; cover me with Your mercy, grant me in it success and protection, purify my heart from the darkness of false accusations, O the Merciful to His believing servants.”
Muslims believe in the divine principle of formless God, which is the basic tenet of ‘Sanatana Dharma’ popularly known as Hinduism.
Once in centuries, Eid and Car festival fell on the same day. But no big person welcomed the rare event for a joint celebration. Rath Yatra which turns people crazier rather than divinely wiser has stolen the entire show. Muslims have been lost completely, which shows Hindus are hospitable and tolerant only in history books that are hardly read by any young people.
Most Car Festival-crazy Hindus owe an apology to Muslims, more so to late Abdul Kalam, late Ustad Bismilah Khan, Amzad Ali Khan, MJ Akbar, Sayeed Naqvi, Nazma Heptullah and Hamid Ansari who have been showing us great light.
Naveen, with all his magical fan following, should have held a grand Iftar party on the Rath Yatra-eve to prove that both Hindu and Muslim communities live un absolute harmony in Odisha and that his team strongly professes tolerance and universal brotherhood.lastly, the drudgery of Rath Yatra must go. The same things, same events, same processes are getting on nerves. Servitors must lose hereditary rights and the deities’ chariots be reused year after year until timber forests outgrow human population.
(The writer is a core member of Transparency International, Odisha)