by LAUREN CODLING
FAITH leaders have spoken of engaging with members of the community to halt the spread of Covid-19 during Ramadan, with the country in lockdown.
Government guidelines have seen places of worship across the country close in recent weeks, in light of the pandemic. For Muslims, this means mosques being shut during Ramadan.
The holy month, characterised by fasting from sunrise to sunset, sees communities come together in mosques for communal prayers and iftars (evening meals), when people break their fast together.
Most mosques have evening congregational prayers which attract hundreds of worshippers or even thousands in larger venues. Despite social distancing guidelines, mosques are keen to ensure that they keep followers engaged and connected in times of need.
In Birmingham, the Green Lane Masjid & Community Centre (GLMCC) has arranged a Ramadan schedule of six hours of daily Islamic programmes online. Kamran Hussain, chief executive of GLMCC, admitted Ramadan felt “very different” this year.
Typically, the mosque feeds around 300 per people every day during the month. It also expects around 2,000 followers to attend prayers in the evening.
The GLMCC annual Eid event in Birmingham’s Small Heath Park, which is the biggest outdoor Eid event in Europe, sees more than 60,000 attendees. “It would be hugely optimistic to assume we will have any kind of normality like this over the next month,” Hussain told Eastern Eye.
The King’s Cross Mosque in north London has also made efforts to reach out to its local community during Ramadan. It will be conducting online lessons on Zoom for children and feature videos by imams via social media.
“(We have put this together so) the whole community can be kept informed and to motivate them and uplift spirits,” Amad Uddin, assistant secretary at the mosque, told Eastern Eye.
Mahmood Rafiq, head of external relations for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community UK (AMCUK), added that they were working hard to ensure followers stayed motivated and active over Ramadan.
“Life seems to become difficult when you aren’t feeling busy,” Rafiq told Eastern Eye. “There can be days when you forget if it is a weekday or a weekend and it can become blurred. So where possible, we are really trying to keep our members busy.”
During Ramadan, AMCUK’s radio station, Voice of Islam, has made plans to increase programmes related to prayer or spirituality. It has also set up a YouTube channel, where people can listen to spiritual lessons conducted by imams. In addition, they are using WhatsApp to share pre-recorded verses.
“For some reason, a lot of members have picked up a lot of information through WhatsApp so we are doing small, condensed material for that platform during Ramadan,” Rafiq explained. “We know people use all kinds of mediums, so we are trying to cater for everyone as we know some won’t always use television or radio.”
According to Uddin, the biggest challenge of the lockdown is the loss of “a feeling of community” during the holy month. “The mosque plays an important part of the community as a focus point,” he said. “In a normal Ramadan, we provide iftar every day to everyone and hold taraweeh prayers (evening prayers). This year we can’t do this, so we have created different channels of communicating with our congregation to ensure no one is isolated.”
Mosques have also put together a number of welfare initiatives to help those in need. Committee members at the King’s Cross Mosque recently delivered more than 120 Ramadan food packs to local elderly people, while AMCUK set up call centres for members who feel lonely.
GLMCC has also organised food delivery services for the vulnerable, a listening service for those who may need to talk to someone and a partnership with a local company called Loft25 to produce personal protective equipment (PPE) for the NHS.
“Such work and projects are creating their own sense of community, with over 1,000 of our volunteers and staff coming together to help others,” Hussain said.
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A seated Jain enlightened teacherAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Ganesha from JavaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
A Chinese silk painting depicting the BuddhaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
ArdhanarishvaraAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Head of a grimacing yakshaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
NagaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
The Bimaran casketAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Hunia Chawla
A still from rehearsal
Them performing liveNajmuddin Saifuddin Qawwal Group
The cast of Marriage Material in key moments from the play, including Avita Jay, Kiran Landa, Omar Malik, Irfan Shamji and Anoushka Deshmukh
Sathnam Sanghera’s 'Marriage Material' adapted into bold new play on conformity
The play Marriage Material at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre is Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s adaptation of Sathnam Sanghera’s novel of the same name, which first came out in 2013.
She is lucky to have Iqbal Khan direct Marriage Material. The play, a co-production with the Birmingham Rep, is set in the late 1960s. Mr and Mrs Bains (played by Jaz Singh Deol and Avita Jay) run a corner shop in Wolverhampton. Their younger daughter, Surinder (Anoushka Deshmukh), is 16, her sister Kamaljit (Kiran Landa) is just a bit older.
They have a neighbour, Patwant Dhanda (Irfan Shamji), who, as we shall soon see, is not a very pleasant man. In fact, he comes across just as racist as Enoch Powell, who represented Wolverhampton South West for the Tories from 1950 to 1974.
It will be recalled this was a time when Sikhs working on the buses were told they couldn’t wear a turban. That was a hard-fought battle that had to be won.
The Bains, meanwhile, simply want to get their girls married off.
Nothing new here, I thought.
What makes the tale different is that the plot twists and turns down the generations. Mr Dhanda, who has the makings of a paedophile, makes a pitch for one of the girls when Mr Bains dies early in the play. “A life with no man in the house is no life,” he informs the newly widowed Mrs Bains.
Mr Dhanda has a wife but she has returned to India so he considers himself to be a free man.
Surinder’s English teacher from school, Miss Flanagan (Celeste Dodwell), who is also head of the fifth form, tells Mrs Bains about her daughter: “I don’t want to embarrass you, but she is bright. Ridiculously bright.”
She adds: “Mrs Bains, I think it would be a pity if Surinder didn’t stay on at school.” The initial response from Mrs Bains is not encouraging: “Too much education makes people’s brains get mixed up, they don’t sleep at night…”
But she is finally persuaded that Surinder should be allowed to stay on for a while longer before being married off.
Mr Bains was very old school. When Surinder confides she would one day like to be “a somebody”, he is amused that “my daughter wants to be a somebody”.
“Like you,” she tells her father.
Mr Bains consoles his daughter: “We will find a somebody for you to marry.”
At the point of a possible marriage, however, Surinder is sweet-talked by chocolate salesman Jim Wilson (Tommy Belshaw) into running away with him. They share a love of literature, and he calls her “Sue Bains”. But the relationship does not end well.
Once she has left, Surinder is written off as “dead” by her family. The story that is circulated is that she was only 16 when she was killed in a car crash. That’s better than to let on that she ran off with a white man.
By the time she is reconciled with her sister towards the end of the play, a great deal has changed. Kamaljit married Tanvir Banga (Omar Malik), a young man who helped out in the Bains’ corner shop. When the two sisters meet again, Tanvir has also died. But he and Kamaljit had a son, Arjan Banga (Jaz Singh Deol doubles up for this role after the death of Mr Bains). He has come home after his father’s death to help his mother who is still running the family corner shop.
Meanwhile, Mr Dhanda’s business has prospered. He now has a son, Ranjit Dhanda (the role is taken by Omar Malik after Tanvir’s death), and he is nearly as unpleasant as his father.
Arjan has an English fiancée, Claire (Celeste Dodwell). In London, Arjan worked as a creative director. But after deciding to stay in Wolverhampton to help his mother, he decides he cannot marry Claire because she is white. In other words, Asians are not free of racism, either. Happily, at the end, the couple are reconciled.
As for Surinder, she parted company with Jim Wilson after realising he was all talk, depended on her for money and had failed to earn a penny from his literary pretensions. She had prospered, though, as a hotel owner and had been transformed in time into a well-groomed businesswoman. After being tracked down by Arjan, she decides to return to her roots in Wolverhampton and help Kamaljit run the family corner shop. Perhaps 50 years had passed during the passage of the play.
Being subjected to racism turned some Asians into racists themselves. The word goreh (white person) is repeatedly spat out with venom. Maybe it is worth remembering the play’s audience isn’t exclusively Asian – white folk are watching as well. And maybe some of the toilet humour ridiculing white people, which always makes me cringe, could be cut out.
In Sanghera’s novel, there is a quote from Enoch Powell’s speech in November 1968: “The West Indian or Asian does not, by being born in England, become an Englishman. In law he becomes a United Kingdom citizen by birth; in fact, he is a west Indian or an Asian still... he will by the very nature of things have lost one country without gaining another, lost one nationality without acquiring a new one. Time is running out against us and them. With the lapse of a generation or so we shall at last have succeeded – to the benefit of nobody – in reproducing ‘in England’s green and pleasant land’ the haunting tragedy of the US.”
In Marriage Material, where the acting is marvellous (apart from Mr Dhanda’s Indian mannerisms and accent being overdone) we do travel across a couple of generations.
There is a scene when Tanvir rejects Mr Dhanda’s vision of creating a little Punjab in Wolverhampton.
Mr Dhanda wants to take over the Bains’ corner shop and is putting pressure on Tanvir to sign the papers. He says: “In this country, money is the path to freedom.”
“Sign, please,” he instructs Tanvir. “We must make sure our children learn to behave nicely, according to our rules.”
He insists: “We maintain our identity so we can be ourselves.”
Tanvir disagrees: “We can be us here. With the goreh.”
Dhanda warns him: “Then we will be inviting chaos.”
Tanvir’s comment is telling: “You sound like Enoch.”
Kamaljit, who is expecting a baby with her husband Tanvir, says: “I would like my child to grow up knowing the history of the Gurus and to read the Granth Sahib. And to love their culture.”
Tanvir tells his wife: “I would like my child to go to the finest schools, to cheer for England in the World Cup and eat Yorkshire pudding on a Sunday.”
Kamaljit sets out a dream that has perhaps come to pass with many third and fourth generation British Asians: “Maybe our child can do both.” Much, much later, in a throwback to the past, we learn of Surinder’s O-level results: “Biology A, Chemistry A, English Language A, English Literature A, French A, History B, Latin A, Mathematics A, Physics A…”
Kamaljit tells her younger sister: “Never mind about the B.”
And that is quintessentially Asian. Their acting is outstanding.
Marriage Material is at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre until June 21, and at the Birmingham Rep from June 25-July 5