Harmony tales from Abu Salem’s hometown

SARAIMEER (Azamgarh): Saraimeer, the hometown of gangster Abu Salem and the land of several big and small madrassas, is a deeply disappointing place for visitors hoping to get a scoop on polarization, tension and religious bigotry ahead of elections. Not only does it lack these overwhelmingly, the town’s vibrant Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb seems to have emerged right out of an overly simple Bollywood flick on India’s plurality.
Inside its bazaars, where both Hindus and Muslims own and run their businesses side by side, it is common to find young bearded men with skull caps debating politics with tilak-sporting men in saffron. Political loyalties are strong, but such debates are eventually doused by a round of tea or blocked by a mouthful of paan as they are not rooted in religion. Vijay Kumar Seth, 35, a jeweller who is fervently backing Narendra Modi, says he wouldn’t have done so if the BJP’s PM candidate had been talking Hindutva instead of development.
Mohammad Ashraf, 21, a madrassa student, says he would express solidarity with most-likely-to-lose Ulema Council with his vote because the party stands by the local youth in distress. The interesting bit here is that Ulema Council’s candidate from Lalganj, in which Saraimeer falls, is a Hindu-dalit Pradeep Kumar.
Barely a few metres away from Abu Salem’s unmarked house is the shrine of sufi saint Ali Ashqan. The shrine, believed to be centuries old, attracts devotees from all religions, particularly during the annual fair of Ghazi Miyan. Held in the month of May, the fair witnesses Hindu and Muslim women bearing a chadar embroidered in Arabic together and taking processions out through the narrow bylanes of Saraimeer.
But what really takes the cake is Saraimeer police station, which has both a Shiva temple and a Baba ki mazaar inside its compound. Both get equal reverence from cops, and inside the main police station area, a chair has been allotted to the Baba. “Nobody sits on that chair, at least no one in the last 30 years that I have been here,” says a home guard on duty. He seems to be speaking the truth, because none of the three cops present sit on the chair when dared to do so.
For a town once dubbed a ‘terror nursery’, Saraimeer records a remarkably low crime rate and has never witnessed communal riots. “People from outside (read politicians) come and try to disrupt the communal harmony here. We have not and will not let them succeed,” says Mohammad Saquib, a chemist.