By IANS
Kathmandu: Clad in white clothes and white caps, thousands of Muslims thronged to mosques to pray and celebrate as a newly secular Nepal announced the first public holiday for Eid-ul-Fitr and the first Nepali moon-sighting committee independently heralded the rise of the moon that marks the start of the festival after a month of fasting and intense prayers.
Nepal, once the only Hindu kingdom in the world where conversions were a punishable offence, marked its transformation into a secular democratic republic by declaring Monday a state holiday on occasion of Eid.
The communist-led government of Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal announced that all its diplomatic missions abroad would also remain closed Monday for Eid.
Before he left for New York to attend the 64th UN General Assembly, the prime minister issued a message, hoping Eid, with its tradition of helping the poor, would strengthen mutual respect and harmony in Nepal.
The top leaders of the major parties also issued public messages, greeting the Muslim community on the occasion of Eid. They included former prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, whose Maoist party, bent on a collision course with the government, has also called a truce to honour the string of different religious festivals that started this month.
It is estimated that about 10 percent of Nepal’s over 29 million population are Muslims with major concentrations in the plains in the south. The Terai lowlands saw the first major Muslim penetration in the late 1850s after the failed Sepoy Mutiny in India against British rule when many people, including some of the leaders of the revolt, fled to Nepal.
Eid celebrations this year have been boosted by the recent arrest of the leaders of two militant Hindu underground organisations that had asked Muslims and Christians to leave Nepal or face dire consequences.
Earlier this month, Nepal police arrested Ram Prasad Mainali, the chief of the Nepal Defence Army, who had masterminded attacks against a church and two mosques in Nepal, killing at least five people.
Close on the heels of Mainali’s arrest, police also nabbed Vinod Pandey, the chief of another shadowy Hindu militant group, the Ranavir Sena, which had been demanding the restoration of Hinduism as the state religion.
Also, for the first time, the Muslim community in Nepal determined on its own that Eid would be celebrated Monday.
The Ruel-e-Hilal Committee formed to sight the new moon sent observers to Rautahat and Sunsari districts in the Terai.
The committee announced Sunday that the new moon had been glimpsed around 6.30 p.m. local time. Based on the sighting, it was announced that Eid would be celebrated Monday.
The Muslim world still remains divided over the sighting of the new moon.
This time too, there have been two Eids with parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East and US celebrating Eid Sunday.
However, in Bangladesh, India and Nepal the festival is being celebrated Monday.