When Muslims pray in church and Hindus do puja at mosque

NEW DELHI: When UK priest Isaac Poobalan threw open his church for Muslims to pray one bone-chilling day, it was a sterling example of interfaith harmony. With Pope Francis, too, calling for more dialogue with Islam, secularism is the taste of things to come. And India has many heart-warming tales of religious inclusion.
Atop Taragarh Hill in Ajmer, the call of the muezzin from Muslim areas in Anderkot and the tinkling of bells from the 16th century Jharneshwar Temple intermingle to create a divine cadence.Every morning, Mahant Vishnu Gopal Taparia scales the hilly tract to meet his Muslim friends. “They take my advice on their wards' education, financial matters and family problems,” says Taparia. Every Tuesday, Muslim children gather around the temple for prasad.
It wasn’t always like this. Hindus began to migrate from here due to communal tension and Partition saw their complete exodus. “Finally, Muslim elders mediated and brought a priest for puja,” says Maulana Syed Noorul Haque, an advocate. “Since then, puja has been performed here every day.”
In Khanqah Muna'mia Dargah, Patna, 70% of the visitors are non-Muslims. When Patna resident B N Tiwari’s son went missing, he went to Muna'mia. “Incredibly, I got strong signals from the shrine about his location and he was traced,” he says.
Meanwhile, in Parumala, 75 km from Cochin, St Gregorios’ shrine rises white and striking against the emerald green foliage. Here, Muslims and Hindus can be seen fervently praying in front of the saint’s relics. Youhanon Mar Demetrios, one of the Metropolitans of the Orthodox Syrian Church, says, “All our churches are open to people of all faiths. That alone is a welcoming gesture by our church.”
For E Karthikeyan of Nagore, Tamil Nadu, the tomb of Muslim saint Nagoor Andavar will always hold a special place in his heart. His great grandfather Palaniandi Pillai got the exclusive rights to donate the traditional chaddar there. “In the 1900s, he took the family for the 10-day Kandoori festival and presented a blanket there,” says Karthikeyan. “Nowadays, the priest seated on an elephant, followed by the dargah’s trustees, comes in a procession and collects the blanket. We join in, carry sweets and are honoured by Muslim brethren,” he says. So deeply ingrained is the dargah in this family’s life that the first tonsuring of a baby is done here and every newlywed couple comes here for blessings.
Nataraja temple in Chidambaram sees Muslims being allowed into the sanctum sanctorum, just like Hindus. Mahadeva Diskshithar, one of the trustees, says, “Some even perform archanas in the name of Lord Nataraja and Goddess Sivagamasundari, the presiding deities.”
Such perfect religious harmony is also witnessed in Shillong, where a mysterious cave shrine of Lord Shiva has Christian, Buddhist and Muslim couples tying the knot under the benevolent gaze of ‘Bhola’, a Hindu deity, says a priest at the Mahadev Khola Dham.
In these turbulent times, such islands of peace should be nurtured.
(Inputs from Shoeb Khan in Jaipur; Faizan Ahmad in Patna; Manosh Das in Shillong, and Balasubramanian Sivakumar in Chennai)