A place where communal violence is not very rare and communal riots are in the air, an incident like this was very rare. The residents of Bulandshahr’s Jainpur village in western Uttar Pradesh set an overwhelming example when Muslims offered Namaaz in the courtyard of the Shiva temple.
On Sunday afternoon, thousands of devotees gathered in Bulandshahr to attend the final day of Tabligi Iztema, a three-day-long Islamic congregation. Amidst the chaos, a few Muslim devotees couldn’t reach the mosque on time due to traffic congestion. That’s when the people of the village opened the gates of the temple for them to offer prayers.
“Love is prayer and prayer is love, and we just did our little bit,” said Chaudhary Sahab Singh, a member of the temple management committee.
At the time of Namaaz, the Muslim men who were stuck told their problem to the locals who didn’t take time to discuss the matter with the temple committee members. The members decided to open the temple gates for them immediately. Soon, the Shiva temple’s water taps were opened for ‘wazu’ and mats were laid for Namaaz in its courtyard, reported Times Of India.
“The message of love and brotherhood should spread far and wide. Some Muslim brothers got stuck in the traffic jam here and it was Namaaz time. Since there wasn’t any other place for them to offer prayers, we opened the gate of the Shiva temple and asked them to come in,” said Amar Singh, the priest of the Shiva temple.
The villagers sat and decided it in unison to open the temple gates for the Muslims to offer namaz.
“So many Muslims were in the city on Sunday for ‘Tabligi Iztema’. When some of them came to us and requested to offer prayers inside the temple premises, there was no way we could have refused,” said Chaudhary Sahab Singh.
In these times, when communal riots doesn’t take much time to get triggered, incidents like these set an example and prove that we all the children of the same mother and we need to learn to co-exist. We hope such incidents teach communal harmony to everyone who is trying to spread hatred in different communities.
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