Skip to main content

Home of Harmony

 

Celebration of Diwali at Mahdi Bagh

Media Watch

The latest edition of The Week brings us a delightful article titled ‘Harmony has a home’ written by Sravani Sarkar. It tells us about “India’s smallest known religious sect (that) has set a unique example of peaceful, disciplined living.” The Mahdi Bagh Institution is a tiny community of progressive Muslims who belong to the Atba-e-Malak Badar, the smallest known religious sect in India. The Week focuses on the Nagpur settlement of this community though they have branches in Ujjain, Visakhapatnam, Hyderabad as well as California and Sharjah. They are essentially Muslims but with some differences. They believe that salvation is possible only through the daee, the community’s infallible spiritual master.

The Mahdi Bagh Institution in Nagpur is spread over 25 acres. Each family has a separate residence. But there are no boundary walls between them. The houses are never locked. It is like a private township with its own traffic system, water and power supply, rainwater harvesting facility, dispensary and a community hall. They have a swimming pool, a fishing pond, golf course, cricket and football grounds, tennis court, volleyball and badminton courts and indoor games facilities. The entire campus is maintained meticulously and it is a kind of paradise on earth. 

A newly wed couple

The people are guided by the principles of peace, simplicity, love, brotherhood, gender equality and respect for all faiths. Not every child born to the members automatically becomes a member of this community. The child has to grow up and make a choice as an adult, a choice made on the basis of understanding and accepting the community’s fundamental spiritual beliefs and principles.

The community is neither exclusivist nor expansionist. They accept individuals from outside through marriage. But once again the individual has to make a personal choice, a commitment. 

Maulana Amiruddin Malak Saheb, present spiritual head

I have always believed that if the systems are good the individuals will be good too. In other words, if our socio-political setup encourages compassion and generosity, there will be compassion and generosity around. People like to be good. But they need the support of the systems. Why is there so much evil around? My firm conviction is that our systems foster evils. Just look at the present India. Isn’t it founded on hatred and mutual distrust? Aren’t we told and taught to hate rather than love? Aren’t we taught to dig up ancient hatreds and hug the blood-hungry ghosts?

Institutions like the one highlighted above show us that goodness is not necessarily a dream.

PS. All pictures above are from The Week.

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanJune 19, 2022 at 2:34 PM

    Hari OM
    An intriguing example of how to live life differently. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yamini MacLeanJune 19, 2022 at 2:36 PM

      PS - my comment yesterday has not appeared - do check your spam comments folder; Blogger has been playing some tricks with everyone's comments this past couple of months. Yxx

      Delete
    2. Tomichan MatheikalJune 19, 2022 at 3:15 PM

      It's good to know that such communities exist. They give us hope.

      Delete
  2. HaddockJune 20, 2022 at 8:33 PM

    This is interesting and informative. I never knew about this sect.The best part is ..... the child has to grow up and make a choice as an adult....... All said and done, The Week always comes out with unique articles.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 21, 2022 at 4:10 AM

      I wasn't aware of this sect too. Communities like this offer hope for a better world.

      Delete
  3. AnonymousJune 21, 2022 at 7:12 AM

    I think I heard about bohra muslims but not this...sounds cool specially the act of leaving the choice to kids till they grow .
    ......before they choose a religion....wish they had an option to not choose at all...they must be having ....but what if even normal muslims are just as open as this and keep religion very personal....u think they are very minimal and exceptional group ?? :( Among many I kno there r ignorant but mostly submissive sect who keep religion inside doors but ya I kno there r some frenzy folks...however good to kno that some people are called *progressive muslims* specifically :) this is afshan
    ..unable to comment with my profile

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 22, 2022 at 4:57 AM

      Religion should have become defunct long ago. That's my personal view. Religion does more harm than good whether Islam, Hinduism or Christianity. In such a world where gods are pernicious, sects like this Mahdi Bagh become significant. They show that religion needn't be so abhorrent.

      Delete
    2. AnonymousJune 22, 2022 at 8:13 PM

      That's true! I agree

      Delete
  4. Rajeev MoothedathJune 24, 2022 at 2:55 PM

    Good to know about this progressive community...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The
62 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so
39 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
36 comments
Read more

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r
34 comments
Read more