SHIVRAJPUR: Aneesh Quereshi, his wife and three children have been performing the puja of the elephant-headed deity for last five years at their Shivrajpur village home in Gujarat’s Panchmahal district.

Shivrajpur village sarpanch Kanubhai Soni said, “This has set up a unique example of brotherhood and communal amity. The Hindu people staying in the village visit Quereshi’s home for darshan at the time of aarti and puja of the idol.”

Deputy sarpanch Satish Sharma said the celebration has been going on in their village, having a population of nearly 5,000, with a lot of camaraderie between the two communities. Almost whole of the village participates along with Quereshi in the immersion of idol in Dhadhar river every year, he added.

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RAJASTHAN: A three-day festival is organised at the Dargah of Narhar – also known as Dargah of Sharif Hazrat Hajib Shakarbar – situated near Chirawa in Jhunjhunu district, about 200 km from Jaipur. “This festival is being organised here for the last 300-400 years and people of all communities come here. A main aim of this celebration is to promote Hindu-Muslim brotherhood,” said dargah secretary Usman Ali Pathan.

People from many states including Maharashtra, Bihar, Delhi, Haryana, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh visit the dargah during the festival. “Thousands of Hindus come here and offer flowers, chadar, coconut and sweets in the shrine,” he said. Over 400 shops come up in the vicinity during the festival time. Qawalis, skits and dance dramas are organised on the night of Janmashtami, similar to the ones held in temples.

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India is a land of festivals, where often people from different communities and religions come together to celebrate festivities irrespective of their faith or community. Spreading love, compassion and harmony — the festive season can often be the force that brings people closer beyond faith, and this year – like many others – we have witnessed some beautiful examples.

Muslims around the world and in India celebrated the important Eid al-Adha on Saturday. But when heavy rainfall stalled Eid celebrations in Uttarakhand, people from the Sikh community came forward. The Muslims in Joshimath were unable to offer namaz on the holy day at Gandhi Maidan in town, instead, so they prayed inside a gurudwara instead.

Mumbai Police too shared another heartwarming image of Hindu-Muslim communities celebrating two festivals – Eid and Ganesh Chaturthi – together in the city. Tweeting out a photo of Muslim devotees offering namaz in a Ganpati mandap, they highlighted “the essence of Mumbai” at Ganesh Murti Nagar, Cuffe Parade.

A similar scene was noticed in Gujarat. To spread the message of communal harmony, for the first time a Ganpati pandal was erected next to Bala Pir Shrine near Udhna Darwaja at Navsari Bazar in Surat. Members of the Hindu community celebrating the Ganesh Chaturthi were seen wishing Eid Mubarak to their Muslim brethren on Bakrid.

On the holy occasion of Bakrid, a few Muslim women were seen performing aarti at a Ganpati mandap in Mumbai. To celebrate the Supreme Court’s historic ruling on Triple Talaq, the women from Sion Koliwada offered obeisance to Lord Ganesha.

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KERALA: The Lakshmi Narasimhamurthy Vishnu Temple, in Punnathala, invited Muslims for a vegetarian iftar party. Some 500 Muslims, including men women and children from the area, attended the iftar. As unusual as it sounds, the temple authorities held the iftar as a token of appreciation to the members of the Muslim community, who had contributed to the restoration of the century-old temple. The Iftar was a part of the week-long Punaprathishta (restoration) of the idol and Naveekarana Kalasham (renovation) at the temple. The restoration ceremony which began on Monday will conclude on Sunday.

Cherusseri Unnikrishnan, the temple committee president said that the people of the village live like a family and religion has never come between as a dividing factor.He also recalled that not just financial contribution, youths from Muslim community had joined hands with the Hindus during the restoration works.

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DELHI: Kush Kumar Singh, a doctor by profession, is Faizal’s flatmate. Strangers to each other until a few years ago, the two have been sharing the space for the last three years. In Gaffar Manzil, a predominately Muslim colony, Faizal underlined, “There is only one Kush, one Hindu resident. So most people know about him.”

There is also a larger reality that Faizal pointed out – Hindus and Muslims may form the two largest constituents of the country’s citizenry, but they rarely live as neighbours, let alone sharing a roof. This is particularly true in North India.

“Living in a Muslim colony for the last three years,” he said, “has not made me less of a Hindu but it has certainly made me open up to Muslims. It helped my neighbours to open up too. Just as I have never lived among Muslims, they also have never lived with a Hindu. So there are perceived notions about each other.”

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MALDA: A group of Muslim youths took the body of Biswajit Rajak, 35, a Hindu who died on Monday, to the crematorium and even chanted the name of Hari (equivalent of Ram Naam Satya Hai) following the Hindu tradition. They carried his body on their shoulders for a distance of 3 kms to the crematorium, and performed all the traditional Hindu rituals including consigning the ashes to the nearby river and taking a dip in the river after the cremation.

Rajak’s family is are so poor that they could not pay the crematorium and associated charges. When his family could not arrange his cremation on Tuesday, villagers gathered at his house and requested Biswajit’s father Nagen Rajak to allow them to cremate his son. Even the moulavi of the local mosque also went to the crematorium. The Muslim neighbors paid the money necessary for his last rites. The Rajaks are one of the two Hindu families in the village of about 6,000 residents.

“The common people are not really bothered. Helping a family in distress and chanting some Hindu names can’t take away my religion,” said Ayesh Ali, a villager who participated in the last rites. The Muslim neighbours of Rajak also paid for his treatment and arranged to send him to a hospital in Kolkata.

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JAMMU & KASHMIR: From Muslims cleaning up and organising puja at a temple to 1,000 specially-designed ‘Herath’ greeting cards, this Shivratri Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims bonded and reached out to each other, with social media providing a rare platform to relive past memories.

“We have decided to clean up the premises of the temple for the Pandits. We want them to perform puja with all reverence and without any sense of insecurity,” said Rashid Dar, a local.

“I miss water-soaked walnuts that Pandits would offer to Muslims in neighbourhood. For ‘salam’, I would visit Pandits the next day after herath,” recalled Ashraf Kishoo on Facebook.

“Around 1,000 greeting cards were delivered to Pandit families. The card highlights the poetry of Lal Ded, equally revered by Muslims and Pandits. It carries the picture of a stone temple of Mansbal that was restored with the help of locals. The idea is highlight the rich culture the State has nurtured for centuries,” Works Minister and government spokesman Nayeem Akhtar said.

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AMARNATH: Defying curfew restrictions on Wednesday, local Muslims risked their lives to rescue the Amarnath Yatra pilgrims injured in a road accident on Jammu-Srinagar National Highway No.1 A and carried them to hospitals.

The driver of the mini-bus carrying the pilgrims died of injuries after the vehicle met an accident near Bijbehara town in Anantnag district.

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AZAMGARH: It is 3 in the morning and everyone in Uttar Pradesh’s Mubarakpur, a village famous for its Banarasi sari weavers, is sleeping.

Gulab Yadav, 45, and his son Abhishek knock at each door and do not leave before the families are awake

One man is awake, though, and so is his 12-year-old son.

These two start their work at 1 am and spend two hours waking all Muslim families in the village for their morning Sehri meal and Azaan before the start of their daylong fast in the month of Ramzan.

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PURTAGERI:  In Purtageri north Karnataka, Hindus are helping Muslims restore a mosque that was on the brink of collapse.

It’s a century-old mosque that’s been crying for attention since last October. The roof of the mosque started leaking and a portion of it was badly damaged in the heavy rains that lashed many parts of north Karnataka last year.

But with the rains setting in, a rare show of communal harmony was displayed to the entire country. Hindus have taken the lead to pitch in with donations and construction material to re-build the damaged mosque in remote Purtageri, a village near Gadag in north Karnataka, about 400 kms from Bangalore.

There are about 150 households in Purtageri of which only about 10 families are Muslim, who are daily wagers or agricultural labourers. Hence, they couldn’t afford the renovation of their only place of worship. But Hindus from the neighbouring historic town of Gajendraghada donated willingly and work is now on in full swing with donations to the tune of about Rs 1 lakh. Some Hindus who couldn’t donate in cash or kind, have volunteered to help with the masonry and labour.

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Often, we read about a religion and get influenced by its ideals. But how often does it happen that in a country like India, where religion plays such an important role in defining your identity and place in society, a Hindu boy not just got inspired by a Muslim leader but also wrote an entire book on Him.

“When I was a kid, our teachers would tell us to read books as part of our course. Since those days I spent a lot of time reading. I read Muhammad’s biography too and I thought that I should write about this amazing personality,” he says.

Highly influenced by the Quran and Muhammad’s ideas, Rajeev Sharma says there is no other book that talks about peace and harmony better than the Quran. In the future, he is planning to translate it in Marwari too.

Having translated other Hindu religious books in Marwari, Sharma’s first experiment with a different religion has already created a stir. “I want to create libraries in all the villages of India. Books are the best thing one can have and children should inculcate the habit of reading,” he says.

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Holi has a Muslim history as well. Revered Sufi saints like Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia and Ameer Khusro in their chaste Persian and Hindvi poetry have adored the ‘pink’ festival generously.

Emperor Bahadurshah Zafar, whose Holi phags (songs) are even relished today and who allowed his Hindu ministers to tinge his forehead with gulal on the day of the festival each year, writes: “Kyon mo pe mari rang ki pichkari, Dekho kunwarji doon gi gari…” (Why am I with colour sprinkled – By me now you will be abused).

During the Shahjahani tenure of Delhi, Holi was known as Eid-e-Gulabi (pink Eid) or Aab-e-Pashi (shower of colourful flowers), and truly so owing to its carnival spirit and hysterical rejoicing for both the major Indian communities.

The umaras (nobles), the rajahs and the nawabs all exchanged rose-water bottles and sprinkled scented water on each other along with the frenzied beating of nagaras (big drums).

This enlightened spirit percolated in the Mughals right from the time of Akbar. Even Jahangir is shown holding Holi festivities in his autobiography Tuzk-e-Jahangiri. Many artists especially Govardhan and Rasik have shown Jahangir playing Holi with Noorjahan, his wife. Mohammed Shah Rangila, in a remarkable painting, is shown running around the palace with his wife following him with a pichkari (water spout).

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In Alam Mein Intikhaab Dilli, Maheshwar Dyal writes,

“Holi is an ancient Hindustani festival which is played by every man and woman irrespective of religion and caste. After coming to India, the Muslims also played Holi with gusto, be it the Badshah or the Faqeer.”

Holi would be celebrated on the same scale as Eid in the Red Fort or Qila e Moalla (Exalted Palace). It was called Eid e gulaabi or Aab-e-Pashi (Shower of Colourful Flowers), with everyone joining in.

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