By Matters India Reporter
New Delhi: A progressive Hindu group has expressed dismay and sadness over the arrest of a group of interfaith activists by the Uttar Pradesh police.
“Faisal Khan has been working tirelessly over years for the cause of inter-religion peace and harmony,” says a statement from the “Hindu Voices for Peace,” a group that claims to be comprised of Hindus and concerned citizens of India with no political affiliations.
Khan and others are members of Khudai Khidmatgar (Servants of God), a movement started in 1929 by the freedom fighter Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, also known as Badshah Khan and Frontier Gandhi, to encourage mutual harmony between Hindus and Muslims.
They were arrested on October 29 and sent to judicial custody on charges of “promoting enmity between religions” and “defiling a place of worship.
Khan had prayed for religious amity and harmony at the Nand Baba temple in Mathura, the birthplace of Lord Krishna.
Along other Khudai Khidmatgar members, Khan visited Nand Baba temple during their pilgrimage to different places of worship across the country. They prayed to Sri Krishna, “who taught that God is the same to all,” the statement points out.
After the prayers in the temple, it was time for Khan’s namaz.
“We learn that Faisal Khan was going outside for his namaz, but the priest of Nand Baba temple, in the tradition of world-famous Hinduism, invited him to perform namaz there itself inside the temple premises. We cannot emphasize enough that Faisal Khan performed namaz in the temple only after the Nand Baba temple priest invited him to do so,” the statement points out.
The group dismissed as misplaced the charges of promoting enmity and defiling a place of worship against Khan.
“This is so, because our Upanishads teach us ‘Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti,’ (Truth is one, but the wise perceive it differently), and thereby namaz is merely an expression of devotion to one and the same creator,” asserts the Hindu group.
After Khan’s namaz at Nand Baba temple, some Hindus reportedly recited Hanuman chalisa at a mosque, with the permission of the Muslim cleric of the mosque. However, the police also arrested them for charges similar to those against Khan and others.
The group urged the Uttar Pradesh government to release Khan and the others from custody. “We have no hesitation in equally earnestly requesting government to also release from custody, the Hindu men who were arrested for reciting Hindu scriptures at a mosque.”
Such an action, the group says, will contribute immensely to shared values of peace and compassion which are at the heart of all religious traditions, and thereby promote communal harmony in the interest of our nation.
Some signatories of the statement were Akriti Bhatia, founder of PAIGAM (message) Network, Brahmachaari Aatmabodhanand of Matri Sadan Ashram in Haridwar, J. Devika, a historian in Kerala and Deepik Gupta, cofounder of Hindus for Human Rights.