Ramuwan And Cham Bani People In Ninh Thuan Province

Ramuwan is the name of the most important festival in cultural and spiritual life of Bani Muslims, mostly Cham by ethnicity, in NinhThuan Province.

- Inrasara

The festival takes place during the whole 9th month of the Islamic calendar, in order to protect traditional cultural values of Cham people, at the same time to educate young generations to live a good life, please the gods and build a strong Cham community. 

The Ramuwan festival includes many spiritual rites dedicated to the gods and the ancestors. These rites include cleaning and decorating ancestral graves, rice offering, body-purifying and praying at the mosques.

The visit to the graves

In the month of Ramuwan, Cham Bani families visit the graves in the clan’s cemeteries. They bring sacrificial items such as betel and areca, fruits, sweets, tobacco and tea. After a year, grass grows thick on the pathways, and the rains and winds almost level the graves and the furrows between them. So the first thing they do is to weed the whole cemetery and heap up the graves with sand to make the rows and columns look neat. A cleric ranked Po Acar splashes holy water on every grave stone. Men who have passed the aia karak ritual sit beside the graves, read prayers and invite the ancestral souls to come for the descendants to pay their respect. Women in white dresses and white Bram shawls pray with them while younger people sprawl on the ground. A family may have to visit graves in many different cemeteries, some of which may be far away from their home. But they never omit any of the graves. That is a cultural characteristic of the Cham people, a beautiful gesture to show their gratitude towards their ancestors.

The rice offering