Iftar’s waning appeal in Delhi is having an impact on Bollywood. There are no iftars where Salman Khan could be seen hugging Shah Rukh Khan before retiring to two corners for the rest of the day.
The first ten days of the Islamic month of Ramadan have passed but iftars have effectively faded away from Delhi’s political tables. Iftar marks the customary breaking of the day-long fast at sunset.
Ramazan 2024 is seeing most iftars taking place within the confines of customary Muslim gatherings. Rashtrapati Bhavan, prime minister’s home and residences of all cabinet ministers have done away with the practice of hosting iftars. Now, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, Indian National Congress party and most chief ministers of non-NDA ruled states have abandoned the practice.
As such, there was nothing official or ceremonial about the practice but since the 1970s, successive Presidents, Prime Ministers, other Union ministers and chief ministers have been known to hold iftars as a sign of goodwill for the Muslim community. The guest list used to include leading clerics, eminent Muslims, ambassadors of Islamic nations and assorted political personalities.
Out of fashion now, Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, the Congress, Samajwadi Party and rest of the opposition too ignores iftars. Although Ramazan has still about 18 days to run, Muslim community leaders do not appear too hopeful of any party bigwig organising an iftar.
Since 2014, Hindi TV news channels and a number of newspapers have stopped giving out iftar and sahri (commencement of fast at pre-dawn) timings as a scroll. It was perhaps a coincidence that these developments took place months after a change of government at the Raisina Hills.
The legacy of hosting political iftars is attributed to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who began the tradition in 1980. The secular quotient of non Congress parties contests this claim asserting that the move to play host to ‘rozedars’ was first set in motion by Uttar Pradesh chief minister Hemvati Nandan Bahugana sometime between 1973 to 1975.
The Muslim clergy is not minding it much. Over the years, many of them had become disillusioned with what they saw as a “political tamasha” laced with a display of wealth. In fact, many Muslim organisations, imams and All India Muslim Personal Law Board members had even given “boycott” calls and urged Muslims to shun “political iftars”, pointing that Ramazan was meant for prayers, piety and penance, not socialising and politics.
Past Prime Ministers, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, had occasionally given the iftar the miss. But that happened because of national tragedies or some emergency, and they made sure that a cabinet colleague from their party hosted one instead.
In 1996, the BJP had hosted an iftar. The then BJP president Bangaru Laxman was a generous host at the party’s 11 Ashoka Road, New Delhi headquarters. However, that iftar became the talk of the town for altogether different reasons. First, there were no arrangements for the Magrib prayers that follow the breaking of the daylong fast. When the arrangements were hurriedly made, the namaz was offered in a different direction instead of the west.
As for Congress governments, they had treated the “tradition” as a de rigueur since Indira’s pioneering effort although Sonia Gandhi, as party president, abandoned the practice after holding an iftar in 2001.
As prime minister, Manmohan Singh played host at his 7 Race Course Road residence almost every year barring last year, when he called the iftar off following the Uttarakhand floods.
Vajpayee too had cancelled his iftar in 2003, the year before a general election, citing a foreign trip but asked junior minister Shahnawaz Hussain to host one.
That year, then President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, a Muslim, too scrapped the annual presidential ritual, declaring the money saved would be donated to three orphanages. Kalam’s gesture was widely appreciated.
Iftar’s waning appeal in Delhi is having an impact on Bollywood too. So far, there are no iftars where Salman Khan could be seen hugging Shah Rukh Khan before retiring to two corners for the rest of the evening.