It was in bad taste of the administration to brush aside the religious wishes of some members against Basant as honoring a gustakh-e-Rasool and going ahead and putting up a banner to celebrate it…
It is sad to see when the cultural aspect of an event outweighs its religious aspect…
Allama says:
Manfyat aik hay is qaum ki nuqsaan bhi aik
Aik hay sab ka Nabi, Deen bhi eeman bhi aik
Harrum Pak bhi Allah bhi Quran bhi aik
Kuch bari baat thi hotay jo Musalman bhi Aik
Allama talks about Mussulman being one, not Pakistanis being one…
If we deem parts of our culture so important as to trample on other Muslim’s feelings, that part of culture should be weeded out like cancer…
What a sad event Basant is and what a depressing mentality of those who celebrate it…
Shame on the person honoring the gustakh-e-Rasool on Gupshup like this…
Others will probably argue that it’s a Pakistani site and a great majority of Pakistani citizens celebrate this festival. The government in-charge has endorsed this event and so gupshup is promoting it as well.
But I won’t.
I have read multiple threads regarding basant and in my opinion the case about its origin because of a person’s death on blasphemy charges has not been proven beyond doubt. My forefathers are from Sialkot, I still have relatives there, and I have never heard the story, not even anything close to it. There is a very specific reference to a book and I tried to find it on the internet, but none of the traditional online bookstores carry it.
If you have the book, please do provide a scanned copy of the pages in question.
Even then the theory is shaky, as there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary which prove it to be a festival of local importance in Punjab rural areas where it was celebrated in the coming of spring and harvest. Just because Hindus & Sikhs who were/are native of Punjab also celebrate it, doesn’t make it their religious festival.
What qualifies you to decide what is gustakh-e-Rasool or not? On Basant in Pakistan people fly kites, they don't fly to India to bathe in the Ganges or feed saucers of milk to Ganesh budhs.
Pakistan has it's own local culture whether it's in Punjab, Peshawar, Balochistan or Sindh. If Pakistani tv can cover the event, who are you to tell us that we should ban it from a Pakistani board?
