Setting it right (riot): Hindu priest keeping a mazaar abandoned after Bhagalpur riots

Ghogha (Bhagalpur)

Believe it or not. Bhagalpur, which has been famous for its deadliest communal riots in 1999, has now emerged as perfect example of communal harmony.

Suresh Bhagat, 65, a resident of Amapur, 20 km from Bhagalpur, has been taking care of a shrine since 1999 after it was abandoned by last of Muslim survivors of the riot.

He has left his family with a hope to reinstate Hindu-Muslim solidarity, shaken and challenged after the 1989 Bhagalpur riot killing over 2,000 people.

He has been keeping up shrine and solidarity.

He sleeps on a machaan, elevated platform supported by bamboo sticks on four sides, to guard the Pir dargah, adjacent to a cremation site at Ganga bank.

“No sense of fear and weird thoughts crossed my dreams even once in last seven years”, says Bhagat.

The 300-year-old Bazid Khan Pahalwan dargarh has been attracting Hindu and Muslim devotees alike. Last of Muslim families at Amapur, Ghogha moved to Bhagalpur for a living and to escape “tantrums of dominant Hindus”.

Pakkisarai panchayat asked for a willing caretaker after Kamo Miyan, the last Muslim care taker of dargah, shifted to Bhagalpur in 1999.

Bhagat was ready. There was surely initial resistance from Bhagat’s wife and three sons but Bhagat had his way.

Amapur villagers said “of 12 Muslim families, seven families were killed in 1989 riots”. The surviving families moved to Bhagalpur and Colgong in subsequent years.

Bhagat does not know how to follow Muslim rituals. He only knows to put chadar (sheets) on mazaar. He offers the burnt remains of incense sticks, called bhasm, to Hindu and Muslim devotees who throng from neighbouring Ekchari, Bhagalpur, Ghogha and at times from Kolkata and Lucknow as well.

An illiterate Bhagat wishes he could offer namaz. But he prefers to “internalize” his respect for Islam. “Though I do not know nitty-gritty of any religion, every religion surely talks of love and peace,” says the Hindu keeper.

Bhagalpur administration, however, is not aware of “good example being set by Bhagat”. The Bhagalpur district magistrate Bipin Kumar told “I did not know this. It is a great example of communal harmony”.

Colgong JD (U) MLA Ajay Mandal had promised to renovate the dargah before he successfully contested the last Assembly election. Mandal, however, has not yet fulfilled his promise. Mandal could not be contacted.

It is evening. Bhagat’s son, Anil, who plies a rickshaw, comes to see his father at the shrine. He gives a disapproving look at his father and hands over a tiffin-box to him, who spends 24X7 at dargah.

Bhagat just smiles and rides atop the elevated bamboo platform with his dinner pack to say “Kaash aesi bhi muhabbat ho apne desh mein, jab tere ghar upwaas ho, mere ghar ramzan ho (I wish there is such love when Hindu fasting and Ramzan fall on the same day”.