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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NATHOWAL: Sikh and Hindu community members from helping Muslims repair an old mosque and even have a second storey constructed. In fact, the non-Muslims are bearing more than 65% of the expenses.

Nathowal has a population of around 7, 000 of which around 500 are Muslims. Around 50 members are those of Hindus.

THANE: Putting humanity over religion, a group of Muslim youths from Mumbra set an example when they carried out the funeral rites of a 65-year-old neighbour, Waman Kadam, who died on Sunday night in his Almas Colony tenement. Kadam was employed as a building watchman.

When Kadam’s two sons, who are from his first wife, and relatives were reluctant to come over at night to help the ailing widow, Vitava, in her hour of need, she requested the youths to help her cremate him. Khalil Pawne, Fahad Dabir, Nawaz Dabir, Rahil Dabir, Shaban Khan, Maqsood Khan, Farooque Khan, Mohammad Kasam Shaikh promptly set out to look for a pundit to conduct the funeral rituals and even got a death certificate from a doctor.

“My husband would never have thought that his last journey would be with so much honour. There were 40-odd Muslim youths in the funeral procession. We have known them since they were knee high; now, they turned out to be sensitive and responsible adults,” said Vitava.

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The ongoing uprising in Kashmir has relaxed only minutely, but festivity engulfs Loswani village. At least a thousand people — both Muslims and Sikhs — started arriving at the bride’s house early on the wedding day.

“We did not invite anyone, they came on their own,” says Nisha’s aunt. “They stayed here for the whole day, but didn’t eat anything.”

The bride’s sister Neha has many Muslim friends, both male and female, at her college in Pulwama town. “Each one of them worked very hard for the wedding,” she says. Her female friend smiles and hugs her. “She was wearing a sari, everyone thought she was a Pandit lady,” says Neha.

“But even then, many people came and we had a very good time.” She speaks frankly about the monetary support that people offered for Nisha’s wedding, some as much as Rs200,000: “They said she is our daughter as much as she is yours.”

Young girls do the bride’s make-up, men decorate the house and women — Muslims outnumbering the Pandits — perform wanwun, or traditional folk songs.

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NEW YORK CITY: The Manganiyar Seduction begins in almost complete darkness — light bulbs faintly illuminate 36 human-sized rectangular boxes on a large four-tier set.  Then the sound of a khamacha, an Indian stringed instrument, breaks the silence. Slowly, lights come up on one of the boxes to reveal the musician sitting cross-legged, dressed in white with an orange turban.

“They have the Muslim saints and they worship Allah,” Abel says. “And then they also have their … Hindu goddesses. And they sing to both,” he says. “Like, there would not be any difference if they were to sing a Sufi Islam mystic song or if they were to sing a Hindu mystic song. It would be with the equal amount of devotion.”

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