Is it Ramadan or Ramzan? The debate that has divided South Asia
The use of Ramadan is being decried by some as an Arabisation of language and religious practices, while others point to the word becoming popular because it is what the observance is called in English
Ramadan is the ninth lunar month of the Islamic calendar. The name has origins in Arabic, with meanings related to “heat”, “scorchedness” and “parchedness”, harking back to when the observance took place in summer, at a time when the calendar included interim periods aligning it to the solar calendar.
During this month, Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset, as the fourth of Islam’s five pillars. The word “Ramadan” – through semantic shift – also refers to the act of fasting, leading to expressions such as “doing Ramadan” (observing the fast of Ramadan).
A hotly debated issue in South Asia revolves around which form the name should take – Ramadan or Ramzan. The Arabic letter daawd, with a pronunciation similar to “d”, corresponds in Urdu, for example, to zaawd, pronounced “z”, leading to a variation in this word (and many others). With Ramzan being considered the traditional spelling in many of the languages of South Asia (though other forms abound), some people decry the change in recent years to Ramadan, pointing at an Arabisation not only of language but also religious practice, and calling for the upholding of linguistic purity and heritage. Other scholars argue that the change has less to do with the word being in Arabic and Arabic influence and more to do with the fact that in English – the second official language on the Indian subcontinent – the word is “Ramadan”.
The first day following the end of Ramadan is Eid al-Fitr or Eid ul-Fitr (“celebration of breaking the fast”). In the Malay-speaking world, this is Hari Raya Puasa – hari raya means “day of celebration” and puasa is “to fast, fasting” while Ramadan is bulan puasa (“month of fasting”).
Ketupat – a type of rice dumpling encased in a diamond-shaped woven palm leaf pouch, commonly found in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore – is a symbol of Eid al-Fitr in the region, the tradition originating in Java. In Javanese, ketupat or kupat means ngaku lepat (“to admit one’s mistakes”), in accordance with the seeking of forgiveness during Ramadan, with the crossed weaving symbolising the mistakes of humans, and the white rice cakes standing for purity and deliverance from sins.
From 1996 to 1998, Lunar New Year and Hari Raya Puasa fell in the same week. Chinese and Muslim communities in Singapore and Malaysia held joint celebrations, coining the term Kongsi Raya or Gongxi Raya. This portmanteau plays both on Gong Xi Fa Cai – Chinese New Year wishes in Mandarin – and on Malay kongsi “to share”, derived from Hokkien kong-si “clan or social organisation, partnership” – thus a sharing of celebrations. Such ready multilingual practice and embracing of multiculturalism is indeed what the world needs to celebrate.
