, Hindus joined hands with Muslims at Kozhikode district's Kuttikatur villagea to celebrate the inauguration of a mosque.Leaders of the minority community distributed sweets to their Hindu brethren, who came to witness the performing of the magrib namaz [prayers at sunset] at the new place of worship.
The mosque that has come up is no ordinary one. It is located just metres away from an ancient Sree Lakshmi Narasimha temple and was constructed with the help of Hindus.
Six years ago the Kanthapuram faction of Sunni Muslims expressed its desire to have a place of worship in the village. The issue became vexed when it proposed to renovate a madrassa near the temple.
The radical among the Hindus, who constitute about 70 per cent of the 5,000-odd people in the village, were soon up in arms against the proposal. They felt that a mosque close to the temple, which is believed to be 3,700 years old, would hurt the sensibilities of Hindu devotees. Moreover, they viewed the demand for a mosque unjustified since there were already five others in the village.
Action councils were formed and the village soon slipped into the hands of gun-totting policemen. The tense situation continued until K Sreenivasan, Kozhikode North Assistant Commissioner of Police, decided to engage the saner elements to find an amicable solution.
"I saw a ray of hope when the moderate sections in the Hindu community volunteered to construct a mosque at some other place in the village. The saner sections in the Muslim community were willing to scale down the size of the proposed mosque to ensure that it did not cause any inconvenience to the Hindu devotees," he told rediff.com
Within no time he was successful in hammering out an agreement. The Sunnis agreed to discard their old plan for a two-storied structure and settled for a small mosque.
The members of the Hindu community took the initiative to get the new plan approved by the authorities and helped in launching the construction in November.
"We had given strict instructions to our men to go by the plan and not to do anything that disturbed the communal harmony prevailing in the village," said P C Ibrahim Master, a member of the mosque committee.
"We extended our full cooperation in the construction of the mosque. For us unity of both the communities was more important than a concrete structure. We have been living in harmony for centuries and we wanted to continue that," said C Padamanabhan, a member of the temple committee.
Regarding the Ayodhya issue, Padmanabhan said, "We can solve the problem if the so-called leaders of both the communities are kept at bay. What one need is a spirit of accommodation that the people of Kuttikatur has demonstrated."