Pick of theday

A Hindu's love for an ancient Sufi shrine

By Gunjana Roy, Bhagalpur (Bihar),

May 27: For eight long years, a 65-year-old Hindu man has been managing with care and devotion a Sufi shrine after Muslims hit hard by the 1989 communal violence gave it up.

Suresh Bhagat, who has virtually deserted his family in the process, says he enjoys every minute he spends at the 300-year-old shrine of Bazid Dargah Pahalwan, a revered Muslim preacher, in Amapur village some 20 km away.

The last of the Muslim families left the village in 1999, a decade after Bihar's worst communal riots killed hundreds and marked the end of Congress dominance over Bihar.

Read the rest of this story, whioch is yet another example of how the common man in Bihar is far more spiritual and understanding of the true spirit of Hinduism than the hate-mongering high-profile 'saviours'.

I spotted the story here

Besides boasting of the tiger forests, wild life sanctuaries and a lot of
rich flora and fauna, what is exactly the life of the rural people here? Are
they basically simple, happy villagers living in peace and harmony
subsisting on
occupations like fishing and honey collection from the forests
or is it the
other way round? The local folks, being themselves a part and
parcel of this
high risk zone, been sadly ‘molded ‘by circumstances into a
bunch of inhuman,
atrocious people?

Read this interesting article in a blog by ratul banerjee