Have you ever seen Muslims chanting Hanuman Chalisa, with Hindus in Hanuman Temple, if you haven’t then it may be a big surprise for you but for the residents of Tarsali, it is a part of their lives.
Sohail Patel, every Saturday visits Hanuman Temple after offering namaz at the mosque, and starts chanting Hanuman Chalisa. Almost a dozen of Muslims gave him company in singing Hanuman bhajans with a good number of Hindu devotees.
In Tarsali, a huge number of Muslims worship Hanuman and their devotion is not limited to only singing bhajans but they also participate actively in organizing holy functions along with Hindus, during Hanuman Jayanti.
Sohail, who is just 20 years old, told TOI,”I have been visiting this temple over the past few years. I learnt Hanuman Chalisa and offering prayers here has helped me a lot. After offering prayers at mosque, I visit this temple and sing bhajans.”
Around eight years ago, when the construction of temple was started, a trust by the name of ‘Shri Maruti Mandal’ was formed by the locals and when the donations were needed for building the temple, people from the communities donated openhandedly. The number of temple members is 3000 and it includes more than 500 Muslims.
Raju Abbaas(21) told that, “Offering prayers to Hanuman gives us spiritual satisfaction and strength. I am happy to pray to gods of both faiths as they both teach harmony and unity.” Raju along with Memon Tufail (25) is also learning bhajans and Raju is also a story teller when it comes to say Katha of Hanuman.
This temple which is situated on banks of Tarsali lake has total 96 secretaries out of which, the count of muslim secretaries is 20.
Yunus Patel spoke about the troubles they face when they started going to temple, “We did face problems in our community when we began visiting this temple. But we didn’t pay heed to it. For us, humanity comes first as religion and we will continue praying there,”
President of Temple trust is Rakesh Patel, who is better known as ‘Bhagyabhai’, told that, “Hindus and Muslims here have always stayed together and prayed at each other’s places of worship. Even in 2002, our vicinity in Tarsali didn’t witness any trouble.”
On July 30, around 500 Hindus and Muslims are making program to watch Salman Khan’s latest flick “Bajrangi Bhaijaan”.
We know that examples are like this are very less in our country, but their presence is enough to prove that Humanity is far bigger than any Religion, a lot of us can learn from the Muslims of Tarsali and start showing and giving respect to other religions also other than ours own.