Gearing Ramadan fasting to greater goodness

The government rang the alarm bell more than a year back when the foreign exchange reserves started to deplete fast due to bigger import payments. A weakening taka against dollar only accelerated the depletion.

To check it, the government imposed a 25% margin on imports of non-essential goods in April 2022. To discourage imports further and thereby hold back the reserves, the margin was raised to 100% for all non-essential goods imports in September last year.

These yielded result: import LC opening has come down to an average of $5 billion since November last year, when it was $7 billion on average.

These all happened in the financial arena, but there is another side to it.

The prime minister, citing the crisis around the world over due to the Russia-Ukraine war, urged an overall austerity, suggesting we become judicious in consuming; we do not waste and have patience before the crisis is over once the war has stopped.

But the crisis seems to not be going away anytime soon, and is more likely to aggravate in the days to come, judging by how the price of goods, including the essential ones, have gone sky high as a result of the curbs on imports.

The inflation has been run-away ever since the crisis began, ticking up to 8.78% in February.

Moreover, the hoarders and the manipulators among us are having a field day, using the crisis as a pretext and manipulating the market amid lax monitoring. The prices have kept inching ups every day.

The repeated call of the prime minister for austerity seems to have found no echo in any quarter. So grim is the picture, so cruel and so real too! There seems to be no way forward. Is it a dead end? On the surface it would seem so.

But, there may be another gear to this broken down car, which we are yet to learn how to use. The law does not oblige us to use it; it is not a legal issue. Nobody can force it upon anybody, for in that case it will not work. This is a gear of self will, a free will that takes upon itself a responsibility of its own accord, that risks losing the external things in exchange for an inner gain.

The upcoming Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, can be an occasion when we can put to use this hidden gear to get the broken car moving once again.

In this month, Muslims stay away from having food and sex during the daytime. And when they break the fast, they are encouraged to do so with moderation. These all are rituals and show only the external limits which the Muslims should not cross.

But hundreds of years have passed with focus only on the rituals, ignoring the inner lessons these externalities indicate.

These rituals are meant to open a spiritual portal that opens to a wider courtyard where the Muslims are enjoined to celebrate their spirituality over materiality, where they are reminded that the enjoyment of this world is bound to end someday, but the spiritual world will remain for ever. It is freedom from the confines of this world into a realm of expansion. So, it is more about a greater joy than a small pain of giving away paltry things.

This is what actual austerity mean and the Month of Ramadan can be a proper time to respond to the call of the premier for austerity and help mitigate the economic crisis the country is going through.

To reap this benefit of Ramadan fasting, we need a bit of reorientation, because for centuries the Muslims have been a long way away from the moral teaching of Ramadan, practising only the rituals. 

Had the Muslims had a bit of this greater joy, they would surely have given up the brittle enjoyment of this short-lived world, they would never have thought of hoarding things only to have people buy those for higher price in time of crisis, they would never have given short measure and would have avoided squandering things away when the poor are in need of them.

People would think more of amity among themselves, sacrifice one's interest for the sake of others. They would have talked more about their duties than their rights.

But things have gone the wrong way. Now Ramadan means an orgy of eating, drinking, hoarding, manipulating the market, making money at the cost of people's sufferings. And all these are happening in the guise of religiosity, which bears hardly any fruits in our life.

So, in this time of crisis, the Muslims must reset their motivation for the Ramadan fasting and gear to it greater goodness. If they can hold on to the spiritual mooring of the month, it will surely play a role in mitigating the crisis we are all going through as a nation.

Although we may not be able to stop the war by fasting, we can surely consume a bit little, and that will not kill our body that tends more to obesity. This can also rein in the run-away inflation, which has much to do with corruption in the financial sector.

This will also stop waste of food in hotels, restaurants and community centres across the country. This will show us the minimum we can do with.

In its spiritual dimension, fasting is like a black-hole that can absorb all the evils that reside within us and bring about balance, by nurturing the good among us.