Rethinking Islam with Sultan Shahin

Islamic Culture

14 Apr 2010, NewAgeIslam.Com Bangladesh celebrates a hopeful New Year on Pahela Baishakh Bangla speakers in Bangladesh and in places in many other countries which are home to Bangladeshi expatriates celebrate Pahela Baishakh (Poila Boishakh, in Bengali) the first day of the Bangla year, with much fanfare and enthusiasm. -- New Age report Redefining hope on Pahela Baishakh we have forgotten what Pahela Baishakh really stands for and that we have failed to define our hopes in line with its spirit. Hence, as we celebrate Pahela Baishakh this year, it is perhaps in the order of things that we define our hope in the light of the day. - Editorial in New Age, Dhaka Pahela Baishakh must herald a change in outlook WHILE the political and economic promises of the liberation war largely remained unfulfilled, the cultural sphere did show the resurgence expected of a liberated country. A distinctive and self-assertive theatre movement, the plethora of cultural organisations, periodicals and publications, cultural institutions and academies, literary meets and events, the different kinds of cultural innovations and improvisations, derivation of cultural impetus from the national days, broad-based institutionalization of the Ekushey observance and, most of all, a vibrant cultural activism – all these, to a great extent, acquired a new verve and vivacity after the liberation war and the country’s liberation from alien rule. -- Zakeria Shirazi Photo: Poila Baishakh cards Bangladesh celebrates a hopeful New Year on Pahela Baishakh New Age staff correspondent, Dhaka  Bangla speakers in Bangladesh and in places in many other countries which are home to Bangladeshi expatriates celebrate Pahela Baishakh, the first day of the Bangla year, with much fanfare and enthusiasm. Thousands of people in Dhaka gather at Ramna Batamul in Ramna Park, the main venue of the celebrations, at sunrise, amid heightened security, as Chhayanaut, which has been observing the day since 1965, will usher in the Bengali year 1417, with songs of Rabindranath Tagore sung by Chhayanaut students. Bangla speakers of West Bengal and Tripura in India and in many other places, however, will celebrate Pahela Baishakh on Thursday in keeping with the original Bangla calendar. Pahela Baishakh falls on two days in the two areas of the Bengalis in some years as Bangladesh in 1988 started following the Bangla calendar revised by a Bangla Academy committee, headed by Dr Muhammad Shahidullah, in 1963 to match the Gregorian system. After the Ramna Batamul programme in Dhaka, the crowd, in small groups, will then head for other places of celebrations such as the fine arts faculty in Dhaka University, from where a mangal shobhajatra, a procession seeking wellbeing for all, with marchers in masks and traditional dresses, will walk down the campus roads, Teachers-Students Centre, Natmandal, Suhrawardy Udyan, Shishu Academy, Central Shaheed Minar, Rabindra Sarobar at Dhanmondi and other parks and public places of Baishakhi mela or traditional fairs. People in other cities and district towns will also gather at the cultural hubs of the places for the celebrations and attend fairs as people in the rural Bengal celebrate the occasion by visiting fairs and folk performances and exchanging pleasantries. Traders in rural areas and also in small towns open new ledgers, called hal khata, settling the accounts of the year gone by. The Residents of the Chittagong Hill Tracts started celebrating their new year’s celebration of Baisuk, Sangrai and Biju, collectively called Baisabi, on Monday. The Tripuras celebrate Baisu, the Marmas Sangrai and the Chakmas Biju. Baisabi is celebrated on the last two days of Chaitra and the first day of Baishakh. Pahela Baishakh is a public holiday in Bangladesh and a national holiday in West Bengal. The president, Zillur Rahman, the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, leader of the opposition in parliament Khaleda Zia, also the BNP chairperson, and leaders of other political, cultural and trade bodies greeted the nation on the eve of Pahela Baishakh. Zillur in a message said the occasion influences the life of the Bengalis by inspiring them to step forward throwing away all the mistakes of the past. Hasina hoped the Bangla New Year would bring the message of peace and prosperity for the nation. Khaleda congratulated the countrymen on the occasion of Pahela Baishakh. The president will host a reception at Bangabhaban at 4:30pm today on the occasion of Pahela Baishakh. Various organisations have chalked up elaborate programs to mark the occasion. Cultural groups and other organisations will hold programs such as session of songs, marches and roadside fairs at about 175 places in Dhaka. Similar programmes will also be held outside the capital. Security has been heightened at venues of Pahela Baishakh celebrations. The Dhaka Metropolitan Police planned not to allow makeshift stalls or fairs around Ramna Batamul and it has made roads leading to the celebration venues off-limits to vehicles. The road stretches made off-limits in Dhaka are from Shahbagh to Matsya Bhaban and from the Teachers-Students Centre to Doyel Square in Dhaka University. --- Redefining hope on Pahela Baishakh Editorial in New Age, Dhaka Pahela Baishakh is synonymous with hope; hope is the dominant theme as people welcome a new Bangla year. Regrettably, over the years, the celebration of hope has become largely ritualistic and confined to a single day in people’s life. The reason may be that we have forgotten what Pahela Baishakh really stands for and that we have failed to define our hopes in line with its spirit. Hence, as we celebrate Pahela Baishakh this year, it is perhaps in the order of things that we define our hope in the light of the day.    Here it is pertinent to trace the origin and evolution of Pahela Baishakh. The Bangla calendar was formulated under the aegis of the Mughal emperor Akbar, synchronising the first day of the year with the harvesting season, needless to say, to facilitate tax collection. As a result, despite being formulated by a Muslim scholar of the 16th century and rooted in the Islamic hejira calendar, the first day of the year, Pahela Baishakh, became an occasion for celebration, celebration that had no religious or ethnic underpinning. Over the years, Pahela Baishakh has come to be a celebration of unity, with the urban-rural, rich-poor divide pushed to the farthest back in our collective consciousness, albeit for a single day.    Regrettably, however, the spirit of unity, premised on the hope for prosperity, has come to have a 24-hour shelf life. Even before the music and laughter dies down, society goes back to its fragmented self and the different dichotomies on the basis of ethnicity, religiosity, demography, economic disposition reappear. The reason is obvious for everyone to see; our failure to create a democratic polity, premised on the secular-democratic spirit that Pahela Baishakh embodies.    Moreover, the centre of gravity of Pahela Baishakh seems to have shifted from the rural areas to the urban centres. It seems now devoid of the fragrance of new crops, not surprisingly perhaps because the peasantry itself has been on a sustained decline. New crops no longer usher in an occasion for celebration for the farmers because the crops are often not enough to see them through a significant period of time and the countryside no longer is the picture of prosperity. The pervasive poverty has also made rural areas the hunting ground for radical Islamists, who prey on the people’s sense of insecurity, deprivation and disenchantment to spread across their doctrine of destruction and vengeance.    Overall, the hope that defines Pahela Baishakh may itself be on a decline for want of definition. Hence, as we ring in a new Bangla year, it is perhaps time for us to define our hopes and translate the hopes into sustained social and political action. Our hopes must be liberated from a one-off ritual and made to ring in equitable prosperity for every individual irrespective of gender, class, religion, etc. That should be our new year’s resolve. Probe report on labour unrest debunks ‘conspiracy theory’ THE reasons for the October 31, 2009 clashes between readymade garment factory workers and law enforcers at Tongi, which left three persons dead and more than 200 injured, as identified by a probe committee of the government, hold true for similar clashes that the RMG sector has witnessed in recent years. According to a report front-paged in New Age on Tuesday, the committee, headed by the land secretary who was the labour secretary at the time of the clashes, concluded that management inefficiency of the factories concerned and excesses by the police had instigated the Tongi clashes. The committee was also critical of the labour ministry, which, it said, had played hardly any role in addressing the problems that the workers were facing in the RMG sector and that caused violent unrest in many places, mostly in and around the capital Dhaka. The committee, which submitted its report to the labour minister on Sunday more than five months after the Tongi clashes, also recommended, among others, formation of a participatory committee, introduction of trade unionism in phases at all RMG units and also institutionalisation of an ‘open house day’ system for talks between labour representatives and factory managements every three months.    The committee’s findings and recommendations actually vindicate what the conscious sections of society and media have all along been saying in respect of labour unrest in the RMG sector and, most importantly, debunk the ‘conspiracy theory’ that the successive governments have more often than not sought to take refuge in, to cover up their failure to protect the workers’ interest and to make RMG factory owners comply with the labour laws and conventions across the board. Of course, there are a good number of compliant RMG factories that generally pay their workers wages, allowances and overtime bills on time, ensure reasonably conducive working environment, strictly go by well-defined workweeks and working hours, etc. Regrettably, however, there are a greater number of factories that exploit the workers and do not pay even the minimum wage as decided upon in the tripartite agreement between representatives of factory owners and workers, and the government in 2006, let alone meet their legitimate entitlements such as weekly leave, festival and other allowances, overtime bills, etc. It is the misdeeds of these factories that often bring the entire industry into disrepute.    Be that as it may, as we have written in these columns before, simmering discontent, arising out of deprivation, is not desirable in the RMG sector or, for that matter, any industrial sector, not only because it sometimes leads sometimes to violent labour unrest, causing irreparable damage to life and property, but also because it significantly reduces productivity. The factory owners need to realise that healthier industrial relations have multiple benefits. It not only increases productivity but also induces a sense of belonging among workers, which makes them put up resistance against any attempt at harming the factory they work for. The government needs also to play its role to ensure that RMG workers are not deprived and are afforded their legitimate entitlements; after all, it is these workers that have propped up the economy with their persistent hard work. --- By Zakeria Shirazi WHILE the political and economic promises of the liberation war largely remained unfulfilled, the cultural sphere did show the resurgence expected of a liberated country. A distinctive and self-assertive theatre movement, the plethora of cultural organisations, periodicals and publications, cultural institutions and academies, literary meets and events, the different kinds of cultural innovations and improvisations, derivation of cultural impetus from the national days, broad-based institutionalization of the Ekushey observance and, most of all, a vibrant cultural activism – all these, to a great extent, acquired a new verve and vivacity after the liberation war and the country’s liberation from alien rule. The present-day technology was also put to good use. This is not to suggest that the Pahela Baisakh celebrations are a post-liberation innovation. Certainly that is not the case. In a limited way, the Bengali new year has been a part of this country’s tradition for more than four hundred years, rooted among the rural communities and tuned to their agricultural cycle. But for centuries these rural communities remained marginalised sections in the country’s total scheme of things. Farmers, rural craftsmen, rural shop owners and wholesale traders, have been celebrating the event with gusto in their own way. This is understandable. Their workaday life is cast on the seasonal pattern of the Bengali calendar. The rain and wind, sowing and harvesting, labour and leisure, the sweat and laughter of the masses are echoed in this unique instrument of the Bengali calendar. Perhaps no other calendar is so inextricably fused with farming and rural occupations. With good reason the Bengali year is called fasli saal or crop-year. Though devised by a Muslim astronomer and scholar of the 16th century, Fatehullah Shirazi, at the behest of the Emperor Akbar, the Bengali calendar has no communal bias or religious overtone/undertone. It is secular and has therefore made itself acceptable to all communities. Its bias, if any, is towards agriculture and the farming communities. And if someone tries very hard to trace any religious link of the Bengali calendar, they may find some kind of Islamic link that embraced all communities in a holistic, inclusive order. In other words, it is a secular calendar that chronicles the toiling masses.    To recapitulate, in mid-sixteenth century the need for a solar calendar arose in order to streamline revenue collection in Bengal. Till then agricultural revenue was collected on the basis of the hejira or Islamic calendar which being a lunar calendar was shorter by ten to twelve days in a year and thus did not conform to a fixed seasonal pattern. Consequently farmers were required to pay taxes without reference to harvesting time, which increased their hardship. The new calendar was farmer-friendly. Fatehullah Shirazi was an astronomer and scholar, well-versed in Arabic, Sanskrit and Persian. He gave Sanskrit names to the twelve months but also used words like Son (year – Persian), Saal (year – Arabic) and Tarikh (date – Arabic). The Bengali calendar was secular both in conception and application. By blending multiple linguistic traditions it embodied multiculturalism in an inchoate form.    Shirazi did not create the solar calendar out of nothing. He based it in the hejira calendar and transformed it into a 365-day almanac with effect from the year which marked Emperor Akbar’s ascension to the throne. Till that time the Bnagabda or Bengali year is the same as the hejira. While Shirazi was designing his solar calendar, in the West the science of astronomy was undergoing great upheaval. Copernicus had propounded a theory of the universe which not only upset the conventional knowledge of astronomy but also shook the established faith. Was Fatehullah familiar with the heliocentric theory of the universe which was being condemned in Europe as heretical? Very unlikely. But eastern astronomers in ancient times had made accurate star chart without knowing about the two motions of the earth. Unfortunately western writers and scholars are too niggardly in recognising the contributions of the East. When they elevate Thales of Miletus as the world’s first scientist for accidentally predicting a solar eclipse, they forget that Thales had mastered his ‘science’ in Babylon.    Though 1971 did not invent the Noboborsho celebrations, it heralded a rediscovery of the nation’s cultural roots. The occasion has proved to be a unifying force that brings the urban elite closer to the rural masses. Even if for a day, the rich and poor try to define themselves in a common national identity. This is what gives a durable significance to Pahela Baisakh. Because of their bumpy history the people of this land have long suffered from a crisis of identity. This is perhaps the reason why the people made the Pahela Baisakh their national festival so fervidly and so fast. As we go to trace the cultural history of the Bangalees we are confronted with a series of paradoxes. We have mentioned above about the Bangalee elite class. But the history of this Bangalee elite or bhadralok class is not a long one. And their cultural efflorescence is partly attributable to assimilation of foreign elements, British and Muslim. And we agree that cultural richness does not depend on its antiquity, considering that human civilisation itself is only a few thousand years old. The earliest Bengali king of whom we know anything is Sasanko in the 7th century A.D., a contemporary of king Harshavardhan. Perhaps he was a Nobleman in Harsha’s court but had broken with the emperor and founded his own kingdom. Before Sasanko, Bengal’s history is turbid and not very pellucid even after Sasanko. But for the chance discovery of the Caryapada in the royal library of Nepal the oldest Bengali text would have been Srikrishnakirtan written in the 14th century. The second paradox is that the Pahela Baisakh has forged a common bond of fraternity between the urban middle class and the toiling agricultural masses; but this is essentially an afterthought. It is fostered and encouraged by thoughtful elements in society in recent decades with wholesome results. Traditionally Pahela Baisakh has been celebrated not by rural farmers but by semi-urban shop owners, especially jewellers and wholesale traders. The haalkhata or new ledger has nothing to do with farmers; it is traders who maintain a ledger. The third paradox is that the first month Baisakh is not the happiest time in the life of a farmer. April is the cruellest month in Bengal too. Farmers traditionally like the month of Poush (mid-December to mid-January). Most harvesting is done in Poush and that is the time when the poor farmer is privileged to enjoy some transient flow of money and the village money lender is kept at bay. The mela or fairs are also more common in the month of Poush. Another paradox we encounter is that while the Bengalees were exploited and colonised and their cultural élan was being smothered under alien rule, they stand accused of exploiting the ethnic minority groups in the same way.    At any rate, the Baisakhi is evolving in positive, pro-people directions and is becoming a mass-based event. Let us keep it that way. And it should be remembered that in robust culture there is no place for racial chauvinism and no one should look for cultural purity. No developed culture can be ‘pure’, since culture cannot develop in a self-enclosed setting and must have open windows for inter-communication. The European Renaissance owes as much to da Vinci and Erasmus as to Turkish conquerors who captured Constantinople in 1453. Bengali literature has grown into what it is today due to Muslim interest in it during the rule of Hossain Shah and later cross-fertilisation with English in the nineteenth century. Therefore, not every influence of every ‘alien culture’ is corruptive. It is the aesthetic quality of a cultural element that matters, not its provenance. Any good thing can be a universal heritage. It should be noted that neither the emperor Akbar nor Fatehullah Shirazi was an ethnic Bengali. Pahella Baisakh implicitly upholds multiculturalism. At present, since the last election, the shibboleth of change has been in the air, meaning change in the mode and manner of political and economic activities, change in the way of doing things. We would say change should be there also in thought process. Although change is not mentioned in cultural context, we think Pahela baisakh can also herald a cultural change to give it a more pro-people and multicultural orientation. Source: newagebd.com URL: http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamIslamicCulture_1.aspx?ArticleID=2692