SOCIETY

Muslim Renovate Temple

In Sonepur and Narayanpur - two small towns in Western Orissa a Muslim buys the 'Ram Sila' (for use in the proposed Ram Temple in Ayodhya) as a token of respect for Lord Ram. Similarly, a Hindu woman bows her head before the mosque, only for one conviction she had inherited, 'God is one and Universal'.

In Sonepur, a group of Muslim youths have reconstructed a ruined Hanuman Temple, hardly 50 meters away from the local mosque. As the evening prayer in the mosque finishes, a horde of Muslim residents with typical ritual attire enter into the Hanuman temple to offer their prayer.

It is spiritual equanimity, the act of forgetting all false masks to reach to the Divine, says Sikandar Ali while touching the steps of the temple.

The Hanuman Temple Committee, formed for the revival and construction of the temple, has a Muslim as its head. "The temple is just in our vicinity. It was painful to see a place of worship in ruins. So we thought it could be revived and used as a symbol of peaceful co- existence", says Wahid Mohammad, 25 the president of the committee. When the Muslim youths came with the plan, the local mosque committee supported them.

In 1991 Muslim youths with some Hindu counterparts started the annual Ganesh Puja festival.

Thirty two kilometers away from this town is Narayanpur known as the twin town of Sonepur.. The mosque with the chariot of Lord Jagannath in its custody is the first scene that one meets during a visit to the place. Here during the Ramlila, Muslim youths enact the character of Ram and build the bow and arrows for the players.

Ramlila, Ganesh Puja and Saraswati Puja are the important Hindu festivals, Muslims celebrate these with reverence. During these festivals, they observe fasts and take only vegetarian food. Moreover, the senior most member of the Muslim community gets treatment at par with the Hindu head priest during the Rath Yatra.

Vow for Vegetarianism

The Bihar Governor, Dr. A.R. Kidwai, has taken a vow to remain vegetarian for the rest of his life on the eve of Sri Sammed Sikharji (while) participating in the Shatabdi Samaroh of the All India Digamber Jain Mahasabha to carry out Pran Pratishtha Mahotsav in Madhya Lok Sansthan of Panch Kalyanak Mahotsav.

Rakshat Puri On Diffusing Communal Situation

 Last week a communal fracas was narrowly averted, due to the elders in two communities. The incident took place in a thickly populated suburb of the Capital. The suburb, Seelampur in north-east Delhi, is home to members of all the major communities. Somebody, obviously with the intention of causing communal violence, managed surreptitiously to place a piece of meat in the courtyard of a shrine.

There was of course an uproar when the discovery mounted. But the elders of the two main communities were made in the morning. Rumor spread and tension enough of violence in the name of religion. Communal immediately came together and decided that enough was disorder had helped only either some politicians or agents provocateur or elements seeking other kinds of gain.

The elders talked among themselves, reported the matter to the authorities, together came out to quash rumors and disperse the tension which rises habitually on such occasions, and together undertook to wash and violent incident and the wise way in which they purify the violated area of the shrine. The potentially dispersed the tension leads the mind inevitably to dwell on the need for wider understanding of the difference "religion". Some aspects need to be reflected upon between being religious and being "up-and-fighting" for the first of these is that religion is a very personal belief. A person who recognizes this for himself is likely to recognize it in the case of others. No matter how public the prayer sessions, the prayer itself is and has to be entirely personal.

The implication of this- a second aspect - is that in religion it seems necessary for one to pray oneself and not to impose one's ways of prayer and worship on and personal religious beliefs, needing to be respected. others, who must be presumed to have their own private This leads on to the third aspect that religious devoutness is to be distinguished from religious fanaticism. Devotion comes from prayer by oneself. Fanaticism arises from a comparison of one's own religious belief with another's and an aggressive assertion that it is superior.

There is no known objective way to compare personal religious beliefs. All that might be said is that any personal religious belief which brings harm to another or violates the law needs to be condemned. For example, such things as the killing or maiming of "witches", human sacrifices, other kinds of socially harmful and legally violative superstitions, the deliberate rousing of religious passions for personal or party-political gain and so on.

All considered, then, the elders of Seelampur have indeed set an example for others to follow.

(Source: The Communalism Combat, May 1996)