.Like Pakistan, has the sighting process in India-administered Kashmir also become a victim of politics? This was expressed once again last Wednesday evening when the officially appointed 'Grand Mufti' Nasiruddin announced that he had not seen the Ramadan moon and therefore the first fast of Ramadan would be on Friday. But a few hours later, when the Pakistani Sighting Hilal Committee announced the sighting of the moon, the people of Kashmir started going for Taraweeh prayers at midnight, and preparations for Suhore were being made in the homes till late at night.


Ramzan started on Thursday in the whole of Jammu and Kashmir, but on the same day, the head of the 'Waqf Board', which oversees shrines and monasteries, and a senior BJP leader, Derakhshan Andrabi, announced that it would be an ' Azad' will form the Sighting of the Crescent Committee and it will consist of representatives of scholars from every region and every sect of the state, as well as experts in astronomy and meteorology.


'Muftis' martyrdom alone will not work'


Derakhshan Andrabi told that he received hundreds of calls on Wednesday night and people were very upset by the confusion. "So we have decided that we will form our own Royat Hilal Committee for which we will also build a control room and install modern equipment." He said that this committee will be formed on very modern lines and all sects of Muslims will be represented in it.


A senior leader of India's ruling party BJP, Derakhshan Andrabi, said, 'We cannot rely on the martyrdom of muftis alone in modern times. We are also engaging astronomers and meteorologists after installing modern equipment to eliminate this problem forever.'


He has said that this committee will be formed before Eid-ul-Fitr.


However, he says, ' I am not a victim of complacency, I am a Kashmiri and I know my soil. But the response I got from this announcement shows that the majority of people want us to have our own Royat Hilal Committee.




'The other day, when the moon was seen, it seemed that people had made the right decision'.


Sara Hayat Shah, the spokesperson of the political party National Conference, says that she has no objection to this new project 'but it requires the latest equipment and experts who are qualified to use this equipment. When Mufti Sahib told Budh that the moon was not visible, I believed him, but on the second day when it was the first fast, we saw the size of the moon very large. Then I felt that Mufti had made a mistake and people took the right decision.


Sarah Hayat insisted that her speech should not be considered a political statement. I am not telling the position of any party. I am a Kashmiri Muslim and I want such matters not to be politicized.


Historians say that since the partition of British India, people in Indian-administered Kashmir have imitated Pakistan regarding the moon of Ramadan and Eid.


Well-known historian and researcher Zarif Ahmed Zarif say that Kashmir is very close to the geographical region of Pakistan. Scholars have said about this that to see the moon in a region, one has to look at a nearby and suitable source. The Pakistani region has been the informant of the moon here. So this is not a problem of Kashmiris preferring one country over another, it is a purely religious and Shariah problem, and there is no need for anyone to get angry.


He further says that in all the regions of a big country like India, there is often a dispute over the sighting of the crescent because 'the problem of sighting of the crescent is not a matter of history or politics but of geography and astronomical system.


"We have seen many times that in South India Eid is sometimes celebrated a day earlier or a day later. We cannot look at the problem of geography or astronomy from the point of view of politics.'


It is noteworthy that Jammu and Kashmir is the only region in the whole of India where Muslims are the majority. In 1964, the government established an institution called 'Dar al-Iftah' to guide the people in various religious matters and appointed a religious scholar known as 'Grand Mufti' as its moderator.


Zarif Ahmed Zarif says that this institution has been active in other religious conflicts but people related to Ramadan and Eid moon have always imitated Pakistan.


I remember that at that time a cartoon was printed in Srinagar Times, a famous newspaper here, which showed that Mufti Azam had the official broadcaster Radio Kashmir on one ear and Radio Pakistan on the other. He would immediately say on Radio Kashmir that the moon has been seen.'


Due to this conflict, a situation of confusion arises in Kashmir before Ramadan and Eid for decades. Zarif says, "I have also seen that there were three Eids in Kashmir because one sect said something and another said something, while everyone else was believing in the Pakistani sighting of the crescent."


In Pakistan too, the problem of sighting the crescent has been a victim of domestic politics. This time too, on Wednesday, the head of the non-official Sighting Hilal Committee, Shahabuddin Popalzai, denied the evidence of the moon.


There has been a lot of controversy in the past regarding this. When Pakistan's former Minister of Science and Technology, Fawad Chaudhary, spoke of freeing the process of Rawat Hilal from the supremacy of religious figures and muftis, he faced considerable criticism.


In this regard, the former Prime Minister Imran Khan's government had also presented a bill in the National Assembly proposing the formation of a federal Royat Hilal Committee. According to this bill, the proposed committees of all the districts will report to the chairman of the federal committee and if anyone announces a moon sighting without the chairman or his designated representative, he will also be fined five lakh rupees.