Editorial
Happy Eid to All
Eid-ul-Fitr, bereft of the ritual sacrifice as in Eid-ul-Azha, has already become a national festival. This has been a most benign shift, socially and politically. Other changes have also been taking place. This spending spree, this expression of bon homie hitting the sky, this race towards glamour and ostentation - these are all new. And these do not go well with either the cultural temper of the Bangalee people or with the religious spirit that is at the root of these festivals. Absence of festivals on the Bangalee's national scale created very many gaps in the social as well as individual needs of our people for a fuller life. The spasmodic and cathartic transformation of the society for half a week twice or thrice a year does fulfil those needs by a large measure. And it is but natural things would be overdone for some time. Everyone is in a mad rush for some extra money, money to spend. And extra money has a way of being available only through criminal or at best socially incongenial ways. The Eid week works up a frenzy in all and crime also enjoys a frenzied proliferation. Islam, as its precursor Christianity, was a poor man's religion - a rising of the oppressed and exploited that shook societies into a new dynamism and eventually set milestones of civilisation and culture. Eid in Bangladesh, letting its pristine simplicity, is fast becoming indistinguishable from the Christmas of the Christians of the European stock in terms of buying things. For good or bad, who knows.
What is this festivity for in the first place? It truly celebrates a month of continence - self-denial and self-abnegation. Of giving oneself wholly to God and whatever is good for all. If Ramadan fails to make a new person of us all, these celebrations and festivities would lose their very soul. Ramadan does not say be good for a month. It initiates one into goodness and modesty and a rejection of covetousness. If it could effectively do that we could have a paradise fidduniya. Howmuchever we enjoy ourselves during the Eids, a caring remembrance of the soul of the Ramadan and the truer significance of sacrifice could do immense good to us.
Our Eid greetings and good wishes to all.
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