This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
Note: The Kanpur police have booked close to 2,000 people for offering Namaz on road, allegedly without permission.
A video of thousands of Muslims performing Eid Namaz on the highway went viral recently. The video was of Jaipur Eidgah. And because Jaipur is my hometown and where I grew up, I must have performed Eid Namaz on the same road for at least 20 years.
It made me nostalgic and triggered a flood of emotions. What follows is my perspective and my memories.
Let’s begin with the location of Eidgah. The entire area is known as Eidgah locally; as you can see, to the right, there is an Idgah Van Vihar Colony, and just above it is an Idgah Kachchi Basti. Locally, the road also is known as Eidgah Road. The yellow road on the map is the national highway.
The Jaipur Eidgah. Photo: Google Maps
When we were kids in the 1980s, there were two road connections from Delhi Highway to the city of Jaipur. This Eidgah Highway, and another from Amer Road. This highway was rarely used because trucks moved at high speeds on it, and people preferred the more tranquil and scenic Amer entry.
Eidgah is a term used in South Asian Islamic culture to refer to the open-air enclosure usually located outside the city that is reserved for Eid prayers offered in the morning of Eid al-Fitr (Mithi Eid in local parlance) and Eid al-Adha (Bakra Eid).
It is usually a public space that is not used for prayers during the rest of the year. On Eid, the first thing Muslims do in the morning is gather at a large open ground and offer special prayers. Every now and then, you’d hear the word “maidan” attached to Eidgah, which literally means open ground. This is because there used to be a large ground, where people would read namaz, which was connected to the Eidgah.
As a general guideline in Islam, performing the Eid namaz on the outskirts of town is better and more virtuous than performing it in town. Failing to perform Eid namaz in the Eidgah without a valid excuse is against the Sunnah. Because it is difficult to have Eidgahs on the outskirts of major cities, a large open plain ground is chosen for the Eidgah. However, because Jaipur already had an Eidgah, this was not a problem.
But, as far as I recall, even in the early 1980s, Jaipur Eidgah had a peculiar problem. It was not connected to a large ground. Maybe the open, extended space was considered large when it was built, but not by the early 1980s.
As a result, people would spill over to the sides and eventually onto the highway. Even in the early 1980s, a large section of the highway was covered with namazis. I used to be one of those namazis, when I was younger, somewhere far from the Eidgah structure.
Eidgah was about 6km away from my home. Which seemed like a long distance when I was a kid. It was truly on the outskirts of town. Jaipur was much smaller back then.
My father is a pious man. And because it was nearly impossible to find a prayer space inside the Eidgah, he would finish his early morning prayer (fajr) and leave on his black Atlas cycle just around sunrise for Eidgah. It was a big deal for him to pray inside the premises.
He would often lament that we lived so far away from the Eidgah that he would never get a place in the first three rows of namazis. Our uncles were tasked with bringing all of us children to Eidgah. And it used to be complete pandemonium.
Our uncles were screaming and shouting at us to get us ready on time. They were all terrified of my father. He is the “elder brother” of the family. Everyone had to shower and change into white kurta-pyjamas. (Winters were absolute torture for early morning bathing.)
The ladies of the house would be screaming as well. There would be chaos as, inadvertently, one of the pyjamas would be found torn in the morning because no one bothered to check it when it was purchased. Another pyjama’s izarband (drawstring) would be missing. Someone’s new kurta would have a stain. Some child might cry because they were wearing an old kurta with a new pyjama, or vice versa. Some kid would be crying because they had been slapped for laughing at the crying kid. Every morning of Eid was a race against the clock.
But every year, we’d arrive on time, but never at the Eidgah. But on the highway, about a hundred metres from the Eidgah. We’d bring our improvised janamaaz (prayer mat), which was mostly a freshly washed double bedsheet, and spread it out on the road while we waited.
Every year, our uncles would argue that because we were too far away from Eidgah, we would not appear in the Rajasthan Patrika front-page photo this year. The photo of the namaz used to be on the front page of the newspaper the next day. Everyone was a tiny dot in that picture, but it felt great if you could tentatively locate yourself in it. The photograph was always taken from the tall exterior wall of Eidgah.
And the Eid Namaz is distinct from other namaz. The procedure is slightly different. Every child makes mistakes inadvertently. And as kids, we’d remember who made which errors. It was a contest of “who failed less”. The kid who made the fewest mistakes won the bragging rights.
We’d get 5-10 minutes of playtime after the namaz, either at the small Eid mela or just faffing around at the venue. But, in the next 20 minutes, all the namazis would clear the road and traffic would begin. We wouldn’t stay long because my father would return from the main Eidgah premises, either ecstatic that he got a spot in the starting rows or devastated that he couldn’t make it in time.
🧵
This is the Jaipur-Delhi National Highway. And because Jaipur is my hometown and I grew up there, I must have performed Eid Namaz on this very road for at least 20 years.A thread about how wonderful growing up was. https://t.co/SdDjmBjPIy
— Darab Farooqui (@darab_farooqui) April 24, 2023
As soon as we returned home, there was joy all around, and we began badgering elders for the customary “Eidi”. There was always talk about how small the Eidgah is and how rare it is for someone to get a place inside the main premises of Eidgah. And this was back in the 80s.
Other youngsters took our position as we grew older. The discussions remained constant. No Muslim appreciates praying on the road, and most of us found it humiliating. Eid, on the other hand, is intended to be a collective prayer that ends with embraces. Muslims adapted to it.
We recognise that masjids cannot accommodate the whole population. Praying on the road is not a good feeling, but what else can we do? The summer heat is awful, and the monsoon season is the worst if it begins to rain.
People would have you believe that what we perceive as humiliation is part of a big plan to destabilise the country. In 2023, they make it appear to be some grand conspiracy, as if it’s a plot to disrupt the nation’s peace. As if we intend to take over the highways. As if roadblocking is something that Muslims like doing. When it’s just something we’ve learned to live with.
Imagine having a perfectly clean and peaceful location to pray inside a mosque and Muslims swarming the streets, clogging traffic, merely to frustrate people. Only a hateful and malicious mindset would believe that.
By the way, I had a great time writing this, thinking about the past. At one point, I even forgot I was demolishing the schedule. I couldn’t care less. But now you know why Muslims pray on the road. We don’t want to do it, but we don’t have any other option.
It’s a sad situation, but that’s life. Indian Muslims are hardy people who find joy even in the most difficult of circumstances. We rarely have somebody to explain our points of view to. We just go about our business while being pelted with muck from all sides.
Finally, all I have to say is this – On a particularly happy day, such as Eid, nobody likes to pray on the road. Muslims do not read namaz on the road because they want to, but because they have to.
Darab Farooqui is a screenplay writer. He wrote the screenplay for Dedh Ishqiya.