Candlelight vigils?

The best way to show support

Tweeple Hina Safi tweeted, “Candlelight vigils replacing Quran Khwani bara-e-esaal-e-sawab since social media boom.” This caught my eye. True that candlelight vigils trend has picked up. Pictures of the vigils flood the social media when held in Pakistan.

The term vigil comes from Latin meaning wakefulness. There is a purpose to this focused wakefulness and historically is associated with many things like on the eve of a religious feast or event for the purpose of praying, rituals. When a Jew passes away, a vigil is kept over the body and prayers recited till burial. Likewise, Easter Vigils held on Holy Saturday is an example as is the Midnight Mass held at Christmas Eve. Reading about this interesting yearly event, I came across an interesting passage in a piece I would like to share with the readers, “In the early history of the Church, vigils were held before every feast for the purpose of preparing for the feast itself. Mass would be held in the evening, followed by a period of prayer and contemplation. Solemn services were then held the next morning. As more feasts arose, the number of vigils kept was decreased. In the current Roman calendar, there are six Masses designated as vigils to proceed the feasts the next day: vigils for Easter, Christmas, Pentecost, Ascension, Nativity of St John the Baptist, and the Feasts of Saints Peter and Paul. Vigil Masses are so designated because their propers and readings differ from the Masses for those feasts themselves, while remaining tied to the feasts. Vigil Masses therefore differ from normal anticipated Masses, which are the same as the Mass taking place the next day, but held the preceding evening.”

What I understood was: vigils are not a ritual to stay awake but tied in with praying for an event, usually holy. The current trend however is to hold candlelight vigils for causes. In 1983, The International Candlelight Memorial was established. It’s not just an organisation for holding vigils as some may mistakenly be led to believe, but aims also to work towards increasing public awareness through social mobility campaigns about HIV and AIDS.

Fox News in January 2015 reported on its site, “A family and community attending a candlelight prayer vigil on Saturday for a missing toddler were desperate for leads in his search.” The term ‘prayer vigil’ caught my eye. It assumedly was not just random people holding candles but purposely keeping awake for praying for the child’s return. The report says, “Everyone held candles and stood around a display of candles set up in the shape of a heart. The purpose of the vigil was to pray Drummond was safe. People who attended also wanted to remind the community they were keeping their promise to continue to search for Drummond until he was found and brought home. Even though police had no hard leads on Drummond’s missing person’s case, his family was optimistic their diligent searching and praying would bring some leads to solve the case.”

The increasing number of candlelight vigils point towards a growing conscientious civil society, some say. But does it? Though it is true that greater engagement of civil society members into creating awareness of issues can lead to better governance as we have witnessed in some recent cases in Pakistan, it remains a fact that the civil society remains a pond in the societal framework. The ripples have not spread to include the less educated, the less income group forming the major segment of Pakistan. It has also failed to include smaller cities and rural villages, restricting any vigils or acts of civil society to educated, English speaking, large urban residing Pakistanis.

My view is supported by a report by AFP that states, “Progressives remain a relatively small minority, confined to the educated upper and middle-classes — a fact bemoaned by Nasir. He contrasted the crowds of hundreds at ‘Reclaim’ rallies with the estimated 1.6 million Parisians who took to the streets to condemn the deadly attack on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

“Pakistan is desensitised. But in Paris, millions came out. That has brought those 12 lives to the centre of attention for the entire world,” he said. Muhammad Jibran Nasir, a 27-year-old lawyer who has played a key role in organising demonstrations, said he and others felt they could no longer stand by following the brutal killings of schoolchildren in the country’s northwest on December 16.” (January 17, 2015)

Kiran Nazish writing for The Diplomat, commenting on Pakistan’s civil society, writes, “The criticism by the liberal English media has always existed but the Peshawar attack on a school by the Taliban, which killed more than 140 people, mostly children, swung the country’s civil society into a new urgency to protest. In big cities there have been demonstrations and vigils outside press clubs, and government buildings, many of them calling out terrorism and asking the government to go after the so-called “good” Taliban it formerly embraced over the past decade.” (January 08, 2015)

The question that arises here is, as we have seen, historically, the vigils are held not just with the purpose to create awareness but also pray. Barring an odd instance or two, candlelight vigils held have been restricted to protesting against a killing, or many, or a political cause. There have been incidents of civil society mishandling a TV team outside the Press Club in Peshawar. This was a sad reflection on the cause and cascading negativity.

Carrie Grosvenor reflecting on the meaning of a candlelight service writes in a blog post, “Candlelight services are generally held at night and are intended to be a way for groups of people, large or small, to quietly reflect, pray together, or simply show support for one another. Any candlelight service can involve prayers, even those not based on religious contexts.”

If we want to offer respect and/or support for a cause, group of people, or deceased, the least we can do is to do it right. Requesting attendees to bring their prayer beads, asking all to recite the kalima or durood shareef in case of missing people, deceased and other similar situations will offer respect and gift to those prayed for. This will add to the purpose of a candlelight vigil that I support as a graceful form of raising awareness about the issue.