Leave it to us to invariably focus on the picture frame than the picture itself. Or, in this case, the allegedly photoshopped picture.
Was the picture shown around the world of a City of (qurbani) Blood genuine or touched up? Was there an agenda behind it? Were there vested interests involved?
Such, dear readers, are the typical queries about the photo from Dhaka’s Shantinagar where, apparently, a most unflattering image was shot in the capital of the next digital tiger.
Those questions are largely irrelevant. That Dhaka, in the week after Eid-ul-Azha, gets far more uninhabitable than it already is, is merely a matter of degree: Sometimes it is a little more hellish, and sometimes a little less so. But the fundamentals of the equation remain the same: A most haphazardly planned city with no enforcement of zoning, barely functioning drainage, and more than 10 million souls -- half of which aspire to slaughter a live animal right on the public thoroughfares as if it is the most normal thing.
It is no surprise that these days anyone with a taka to spare flies off to more tolerable pastures to the East and the West during this spectacle, and doesn’t return until the foulest of the smells and most putrid of the innards have disappeared.
That photo from Shantinagar, embellished or not, should have helped start a conversation on fixing the problem rather than pushed cultural and religious chauvinists to the corners in defensiveness about the indefensible. And what we have is a largely toxic and indefensible mix of traditionalism masquerading as religion, municipal corporations pretending to be actual accountable metropolitan governments, and narcissism passing off as generosity.
My friend, the author and historian Dr Taj Hashmi, makes a good case that the literal sacrifice is incumbent only upon those who have actually been to the Hajj; his point is supported by the practices in Brunei and Malaysia both.
In quite a few other, more traditional places like Libya, Syria, and Iran, civic authorities have simply designated certain abattoirs outside city limits to do this kind of slaughter. Yet, other places where Muslims live have come into the 21st century and opted for technology, whereby an “order” of sacrifice is placed with a service provider in the public or private sector with a selection of animals available, and part of the resulting meat is packaged and sent to the customer while the remainder is distributed to charity.
Streamlined, efficient, modern, clean, and within the strictures of religion.
I have very little doubt that all those young men and women wanting to change the world through digital wizardry at the private universities across Dhaka will have little trouble coming up with an app and a supply chain schematic to implement that in Bangladesh’s clogged metropolises too.
But such an approach at a broad level requires civic authorities that are both accountable to their citizens and empowered to make decisions on their behalf; elaborate pretensions notwithstanding, Dhaka doesn’t have that. Nor does it have too many individuals who, given the chance, will eschew a desire to show off to their neighbours how much more expensive and finer their cow or goat was.
And what would be a qurbani without the rich family in the mohalla showing off how many packages of meat they distributed to the poor and needy?
It may be that, someday, Dhaka will have accountable, autonomous, municipal self-government. It may also be that, someday, there will be a mass realisation that the whole idea of slaughtering animals for Eid-ul-Azha is not as deeply rooted in religion as it is in traditionalism.
Or, perhaps, the middle-class and the upper middle-class will stumble upon shame and decide that showing off one’s abundance by ruining the streets and alleys of a congested city is not ethical.
I doubt any of those good things will happen in my lifetime.
What I do suggest is that we bank on and advocate small scale reforms with technology and incentives as the foundational pillars: An app for qurbani that lets you select the animal of your choice in several price ranges?
Tax holidays for businesses that become part of the supply chain for this app? Public adoption of this approach by the high and mighty so that the average citizen senses a bit of reassurance in blazing the revolutionary path? An edict or two from the turban-and-beard folks endorsing it as a good alternative?
Now those are the discussions that should be happening far more than whether a picture from Shantinagar was a photoshopped monstrosity of a conspiracy of the highest order.
Esam Sohail is an educational research analyst and college lecturer of social sciences writing from Kansas, USA.