As Ganesh Visarjan is on September 17, Mumbai’s Muslim community has decided that the Eid E Milad procession to mark prophet Muhammad’s birthday will be organised on September 18 though the birthday is on September 16. Traditionally the procession is usually organised on the day after the day of Eid.
The decision was made at a meeting at Khilafat House, Byculla. The day of the Eid will depend on the sighting of the moon. There were suggestions from community leaders that the processions should be organised even later – on September 19 or later – as the Ganpati immersion processions go on till September 18.
Shuiab Khatib, trustee of Jama Masjid, the city’s most important mosque, said, “Muslims want to display floats on Prophet Muhammad during the processions. If the processions are planned on September 18 they may not get time to prepare the floats. Also police may not give permissions for the floats at such a short notice,” said Khatib who added that Mumbai police will be working for 48 hours without a break if the Ganpati and Eid processions are conducted on subsequent days. “If the Eid processions are kept on September 19, policemen could have got a day’s break from bandobast work.”
Muslims in other cities, too, have decided to hold the processions on September 18. In Navi Mumbai, the Muslim community said that it will postpone the procession by a day if it coincides with the last day of the 10-day long Ganpati festival. In Hyderabad, the organising committee of Milad-un-Nabi agreed to hold the procession on September 19 so that it does not clash with the Ganesh immersion procession.
There is a dispute about the city’s first-ever Eid-e-Milad procession from Khilafat House. While there are claims that the tradition began in 1919 or 1920, a report in the Bombay Chronicle suggests that the first such procession was held in 1935 with the association of 51 Muslim community groups. The procession started at 2.00 pm on June 14, 1935 from Khilafat House, Love Lane, Byculla, and concluded at Chhota Qabristan, Grant Road, where a public meeting was held. The procession follows a similar route and time to this day.
