How meaningful is the current practice of Qurbani?: Institutionalising Free Food and Meat Card for the Poor

Nothing is more beautiful an act than sacrifice – sacrifice of time, resources, comforts or other symbols of the self. That explains why mothers and friends who embody an ethic of sacrifice must be revered. Sacrifice involves making sacred and this point is the key to spilling of blood – cultures haven’t hesitated, in line with Abraham, sacrificing their children, their kings and their most important relationships – in rituals across ages. It involves writing a testament with blood. It isn’t primarily killing but consent to be killed for the sake of Life. Who says one can kill? There is neither the slayer nor the slain, says the Bhagwat Gita. Lord is the only transmigrant, as Sankara said. Life, in its very definition, involves appropriation and injury, as Nietzsche noted.

A routine act of eating for not just wild animals or birds but humans as well involves appropriation and injury. Life writes its grandest chapters – in epics, in love stories, in the lives of its great heroes and evolutionary advances – with the ink of blood. But sacrifice; it isn’t about spilling blood though it may be an incidental cost. Life including animal life, in any case, is subject to pain that far exceeds momentary pain of slaughter. One wonders if we can transpose the craving for early exit from life that we find in many reflective humans – as Sophocles put it in his statement that it is best not to be born and second best to leave early – to animals whose lives are also subject to uncertainty, pain, fear and many things that would call for embracing death and overcome instinctive love for life if given a choice.

Sacrifice can become ugly if not offered as it should be, with an eye on perfection (ihsan) and beauty. It loses its meaning if it doesn’t sanctify oneself. We know the central importance of the sacrifice of Abraham in Semitic tradition. God wants nothing short of the whole empire of self – animal within – from us. But human ingenuity has made it into self serving ego puffing ritual. To illustrate, just observe qurbani in which the poor receive only crumbs compared to the relatives. A better way would be to invite relatives and neighbours for a feast after Eid, on regular intervals. One would be overwhelmed by invitations every week or so from one or the other neighbour or relative and the key expenses on meat would not need to be made. To make oneself available through the gift of attention, to be consumers by love, to consent to be nobody or get dismembered for the sake of other, a community/God is the master key to the meaning of life.

Is there a problem of waste of resources?

So much meat on Eid al-Adha from qurbani in the midst of so much poverty raises eyebrows of both insiders and outsiders of Islamic tradition. Why not divert the money on qurbani or at least on account of additional earning members of family to other charitable ends? However, it is possible to see things differently and such a question doesn’t arise. Nothing is wasted or needs to be wasted on account of qurbani. Qurbani is the largest and grandest food offering for everyone and with little attention can become, for the poor, a regular feast for months. It is the poor from all communities who are invited to this grand feast. In fact qurbani and aqiqa can be converted into meat card for the poor for which sufficient resources are already available but not so far managed well.

Qurbani saves prized lives of humans both physically and spiritually – it is a declaration that one can part away with part of oneself or what one is attached to or developed deep affection for – and makes quality protein available to the poor. It makes a currency of compassion. Gifting, sharing, feasting and smiling constitute spiritual delicacies of qurbani. Qurbani is like housing industry that circulates wealth in dozens of industries and empowers so many down the chain – farmers, sheep suppliers, butchers, meat and meat product sellers, people associated with manufacture and sale of cold chain, pelts, animal transport, feed and fodder, hoteliers and lastly but not lastly adds sauce to the lives of all kinds of consumers of meat. Qurbani is a unique form of charity that reaches to almost everyone at least in the immediate neighbourhood or circle of relations, across religious and class divides.

Free Food and Meat

What if food, especially the prized food - meat - becomes free for the poor for the whole year? First we need to note why it is important or why ann dhan, the charity of food, is considered supreme in Indian tradition. It is because when one offers food to the other, there comes a point that one is told no more, it is enough unlike other kinds of dhan such as that of money about which the recipient doesn’t say no more please. What if raw materials for several other industries or several other products and bye-products of animals – from hides to blood meal to offal to heads and feat – are also made available for free for anyone who needs? One can get everything for free for the whole year if meat and other products are properly used as a currency. It is allowed for the poor to sell meat they get and fulfil their other needs.

We aren’t simply giving meat but means of livelihood, ex gratia of say Rs 10 k to so many needy. Let us count truly poor who can’t themselves do qurbani – and thus are eligible for the share of the poor from neighbours – in say Srinagar or major towns or villages and we see the magical impact of qurbani. In several areas in civil lines and heart of towns and in most villages where people have land and other resources there are no easily recognizable poor, we need to store meat for later distribution. Immediate distribution to the poor will also result in wastage or overconsumption by them. As such we must have meat storage and distribution system with duly verified list of the beneficiaries, with some notable exceptions, don’t do it for the sake of God but as fashion statement, under peer pressure. If they truly did for God, they wouldn’t say we need to do bigger ones as our relatives will mind sending smaller pieces or we receive bigger cuts and must send similar ones.

They would buy quite early and rear with affection or at least get reared in their name from local farmer. Very few do secretly buy a share or give animals to the poor who do qurbani of them. People hardly know about the option of handing over one’s qurbani animal to some poor person and asking him to do its qurbani. Imagine the joy in the house of the poor who suddenly finds an animal at his home to be sacrificed and later consumed as per his will. One should send a deep freezer to a community of the poor and give animals to those poor who have something adorable in their character. Every family head who can’t otherwise have meat due to poverty, can be gifted an animal for doing qurbani by those who are required to do. Can we make it a point that those who have multiple earning members in the family, their family head does qurbani of one animal and other members gift their extra animals to the poor. Give a poor family an animal and it will suffice for six months as he can keep whole for himself.