Lord Rama has Muslim devotees

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Lord Rama has Muslim devotees

 

While the seat of Lord Rama in Ayodhya may still be mired in

controversies, that is no deterrent for some followers of Islam who

have taken to enacting the Ram Lila.

 

Bizarre as it may sound in a day and age of mounting communal

tensions, there are several Muslims who make up the cast at the

Bakshi-Ka-Talab Ram Lila that will conclude on Wednesday, long after

Dusshera is past. Naseem Khan, the actor playing the demon king

Ravana, is in fact more at ease answering questions about Vedic

scriptures than most Hindu scholars. Khan has often put pundits to

shame with his encyclopedic knowledge of the Ramayana that he studies

with single-minded devotion despite stiff opposition from

fundamentalist elements within his own community.

 

Khan's own wife has not taken kindly to his obsession with an alien

God. However brushing aside all claims that he he's turning non-

believer, Khan was back at the Ram Lila this year.

 

Following the example of his seniors is 16-year-old Mohammad Sher

Khan who metamorphosed into a beautiful Sita at the Bakshi-Ka Talab

Ram Lila. The proceedings are directed by Mohamad Sabir Khan who

keeps multiple copies of the Ramayana handy to ensure an authentic

dramatisation on stage.

 

Sabir Khan and his men are keeping alive a remarkable tradition of

communal harmony begun in 1972 and honoured with the Rashtriya Ekta

Award in 2000 by known other than Prime Minister Atal Behari

Vajpayee. The group regards Lord Rama as a symbol of good who should

be respected and revered by people professing different faith.

Fostering better relations between Hindus and Muslims is a

responsibility they take very seriously and in fact wanted to stage

their performance in Gujarat after the Godhra riots but financial

constraints held them back.

 

According to N. B. Singh, vice-president of the Bakshi-Ka Talab Ram

Lila Mela Ayojan Samiti, the most testing time for them was in 1992

when the Babri Masjid was demolished in Ayodhya. Despite a very real

threat of bodily harm, they insisted on enacting the Ram Lila in 1993

and have never looked back since.

 

Alka Rastogi in HindustanTimes