| At a time when both Hindu and Muslim extremists are hogging the headlines with their shrill and aggressive campaigns of exclusivity, a remote area like Kutch is showing an alternative route to spiritual harmony. Mujavars of the dargahs of Muslim saints in Kutch, who belong to the moderate Ahale Sunnat sect of the Sunni Muslims, have started holding Hindu Kathas at their tombs while Hindu religious leaders have also started reciprocating by actively involving Muslims in their own religious functions. So much so that the invitation for such joint Hindu-Muslim religious programmes go jointly in the name of Lord Ganesh and the concerned Muslim saint resting in the dargah.
It was indeed a heartening sight last week when a Kutch-based kathakaar, Vipulbhai Shastri, sat on a podium near the Gebanshah dargah at Kunjesar village of Kutch's Bhachau taluka along with the dargah's Mujavar Mastan Bapu or Kurban Ali, while a motley crowd of Hindu and Muslim villagers listened to his commentary on the Devi Bhagwat Puran (an epic which has episodes from the purans of both the Mother Goddess and Lord Krishna) for a period of nine days.
The kathakaar narrated selected episodes from the puran in a most engaging style extolling the victory of good over the evil. He also empasised the need for inculcating the right conduct in personal life, repeatedly triggering an enthusiastic response from the Hindu-Muslim audience in which the members of Ahir caste, who dominate the village of less than 1,000 people, formed the largest group. The katha was punctuated with bhajans sung by the team accompanying Shastri which extolled the virtues of communal harmony and spread the message of oneness of all religions. Sample these lines: "Gore Uske, Kale Uske, Purab-Paschimwale Uske, Sab Me Uska Noor Samaya, Kaun Hai Apna, Kaun Paraya, Sabko Kar Pranam, Tujkho Allah Rakhe" ("Both the fair and the dark belong to him, Everybody radiates with his grace, He doesn't distinguish between people, Bow before every God, May the Allah look after you" ).
The nine-day katha had sant vani (religious discourses by saints ) programmes at night while bhajan programmes and qawwali programmes were organised side-by-side. If parties of the known bhajan exponents Laxman Barot and Navinnath performed on the occasion so did Farooquebhai Qawwal of Mumbai. As Mastan Bapu observes while talking about the Katha, "I have a large number of Hindu followers and I thought this would serve the cause of Hindu-Muslim union well." As soon as Mastan Bapu decided to organise the katha, his followers came forward to share the cost of the programme. If Subhashgiri Goswami got the invitation and pamphlets printed, a local journalist Mansukh Thakkar chipped in with other assistance.
A similar show of inter-communal harmony was also witnessed at Mota Varnora village near Bhuj where Alisai Bapu organised a seven-day Bhagwad Katha last month by kathakaar Pranshankar Kanada at the Dargah of the local saint, Jusabshah Dada. For the entire week of the katha 35 Muslim families of the village kept their businesses closed and opened a free kitchen to feed the people coming to listen to the katha. And every night there used to be a religious speech of a Muslim preacher and a Hindu saint. Said Maulana Alif Nakshbandhi, an influential preacher while delivering his religious discourse: "Six years ago Kutch became the epicenter of national destruction in the aftermath of the earthquake. Now we want to make it a centre of communal harmony for the nation". Observed Ram Balakdas, a Mahant of Surendranagar district: "Kutch is emerging as a beacon of light for communal amity."
There were a number of scenes during the seven days that provided moving examples of Hindu-Muslium cooperation. Like when the local villagers brought an infant dressed as Krishna on to the stage to produce the scene of Krishna's birth both Hindu and Muslims threw gulal in a welcoming gesture. The beginning of the Katha itself was an indelible mark of communal amity. The pothi yatra of the Bhagwad (in which the religious book is kept on the head of a devotee who leads a procession through the village) was most memorable. The pothi yatra in this case began from the Dargah of Jusabshah Data itself.
Local newspapers were all agog about the event. The resulting publicity even attracted the residents of Bhuj city to go to Mora Varnora and attend the katha. Says Ali Sai Bapu: "The katha is my way of celebrating the reconstruction of Jusabshah Dada's dargah which was destroyed in the earth quake. I am pained at the increasing gulf between the two communities and it would give me peace if I could be a bridge in bringing the two together".
But there are dark clouds that threaten such efforts at communal harmony in the form of the Wahhabi tanzeems which believe in "direct dialing with Allah" and oppose using the medium of sufi saints in sharp contrast to the moderate tenets of the Ahle Sunnat school who say that Allah can't be reached without the help of a saint teacher.
One can call the Ahle Sunnat version of Islam as Guru Puja-based Islam. The biggest example in this case was the attitude of the Muslim residents of Nana Varnora village close to Mota Varnora. Not a single person of the all-Muslim village attended the katha programme because all the Muslims in this village have come under the sway of the Wahhabi tanzeem which preaches an aggressive Islamic monotheism. On the condition of anonymity, one follower of this tanzeem says, "Worshipping the saints at dargahs and using their medium to communicate with Allah is against the tenets of true Islam."
Interestingly, almost the entire Muslim population of Kutch followed the tenets of the moderate Ahle Suinnat Islam till the 1950s when preachers of the Wahhabi tanzeems started coming to Kutch and preaching their brand of puritanical Islam. Today, a majority of the Muslims of Khavda area of Kutch where India shares a border with Pakistan are Wahhabis. The contrast between their earlier customs, when they followed the Ahle Sunnat tenets, and their present self image is unmistakable. For example, earlier they used to rever the image of Lord Datta atop the Kaladungar hill near Khavda as "Datta Pir". But not anymore. They think paying obseiance to Lord Datta today is un-Islamic.
The kathas-on-dargahs experiment received a major fillip recently when Mufti-e-Kutch Ahmadshah Bukhari, an influential leader of the Ahle Sunnat sect in Kutch, declared his support to the experiment saying that it was step in right direction and those opposing it were indulging in a very narrow version of Islam. As he puts it: "Every religion has flexibility because religions are for the good of humanity, it is some religious teachers' narrow interpretation of the tenets that causes communal tension".
Bukhari's next plan is to hold Ram Katha of eminent kathakaar Morari Bapu at the dargah of Haji Pir, a most famous tomb of a celebrated medieval saint in Kutch who had banned cow slaughter amongst Muslims to promote communal harmony. "It will indeed be great when Morari Bapu and I share a platform at Haji Pir," says Bukhari.
The kathas in dargahs have triggered very positive sentiment in the Hindu community too. A katha programme organized by a Hindu Pandit Maheshji Bhat at his ashram in Samatra village recently saw a large number of Muslims attending it in response to an invitation.
Significantly, they were led by a Muslim religious head. Says Nikhil Pandya of a local Kutch daily Kutchmitra which played a key role in popularizing the katha in dargah experiment: "We had heard of moderate Muslims but not so moderate as to hold Hindu katha programmes at Muslim shrines. It is a very big gesture of communal harmony." True, there is a message here for not only the state but the entire country.
by Uday Mahurkar
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