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 Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...
121 comments
Read more

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

Tanishq and the Patriots

Patriots are a queer lot. You don’t know what all things can make them pick up the gun. Only one thing is certain apparently: the gun for anything. When the neighbouring country behaves like a hoard of bandicoots digging into our national borders, we will naturally take up the gun. But nowadays we choose to redraw certain lines on the map and then proclaim that not an inch of land has been lost. On the other hand, when a jewellery company brings out an ad promoting harmony between the majority and the minority populations, our patriots take up the gun. And shoot down the ad. Those who promote communal harmony are traitors in India today. The sacred duty of the genuine Indian patriot is to hate certain communities, rape their women, plunder their land, deny them education and other fundamental rights and basic requirements. Tanishq withdrew the ad that sought to promote communal harmony. The patriot’s gun won. Aapka Bharat Mahan. In the novel Black Hole which I’m writing there is...
61 comments
Read more

Romance in Utopia

Book Review Title: My Haven Author: Ruchi Chandra Verma Pages: 161 T his little novel is a surfeit of sugar and honey. All the characters that matter are young employees of an IT firm in Bengaluru. One of them, Pihu, 23 years and all too sweet and soft, falls in love with her senior colleague, Aditya. The love is sweetly reciprocated too. The colleagues are all happy, furthermore. No jealousy, no rivalry, nothing that disturbs the utopian equilibrium that the author has created in the novel. What would love be like in a utopia? First of all, there would be no fear or insecurity. No fear of betrayal, jealousy, heartbreak… Emotional security is an essential part of any utopia. There would be complete trust between partners, without the need for games or power struggles. Every relationship would be built on deep understanding, where partners complement each other perfectly. Miscommunication and misunderstanding would be rare or non-existent, as people would have heightened emo...
9 comments
Read more

A Lesson from Little Prince

I joined the #WriteAPageADay challenge of Blogchatter , as I mentioned earlier in another post. I haven’t succeeded in writing a page every day, though. But as long as you manage to write a minimum of 10,000 words in the month of Feb, Blogchatter is contented. I woke up this morning feeling rather vacant in the head, which happens sometimes. Whenever that happens to me but I do want to get on with what I should, I fall back on a book that has inspired me. One such book is Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince . I have wished time and again to meet Little Prince in person as the narrator of his story did. We might have interesting conversations like the ones that exist in the novel. If a sheep eats shrubs, will he also eat flowers? That is one of the questions raised by Little Prince [LP]. “A sheep eats whatever he meets,” the narrator answers. “Even flowers that have thorns?” LP is interested in the rose he has on his tiny planet. When he is told that the sheep will eat f...
8 comments
Read more