Hindus guard and pray at mosque in Bihar village

If you happen to visit Maadi village, Ben Tehsil of Nalanda district in Bihar, you might come across the call of muezzin at the designated time for Muslims to pray. However, you may be surprised to know that this village is home not to a single Muslim and yet theaazan can be heard five times each day.

Maadi village’s 200-year-old mosque remains the epicenter of people's faith and is considered the spiritual heritage by all. Though no Muslim lives there today, the Hindus maintain the mosque and keep the tradition alive by regularly playing a recordedaazan at a specific time for Muslims to pray.

The Muslims of the village had apparently fled following riots in 1981. After they migrated, the Hindus took up the responsibility of maintaining the mosque and issuing the call from it to the devout to pray.

Since there is no way a Hindu knows or is authorized to giveaazan, the villagers have recorded it in a pen drive and that is played at regular intervals

The Hindu family looks after the mosque premises and paints its walls each year. The painting is the collective job of the village community. The mosque is regularly spruce up in the morning and evening. Gautam Mahato, Ajay Paswan and Bakhori Jamadar and others have taken the responsibility of cleaning the mosque.

The mosque in Maadi village where Hindus pray

The ancient city of Nalanda, famous for being the venue of India’s first global university is also the city of Sufi Saint Shaikh Sharfuddin Ahmed Yahya Maneri. There is a dargah in Bihar Sharif in his name where both Hindus and Muslims pay their obeisance at.

The mosque was built 200 years ago by Badre Alam, the grandfather of Khalid Alam, director of Sadar Alam School in Biharsharif. Till 1981, both Hindus and Muslims lived together in Maadi village. But after the riots in 1981, Muslim families left and settled elsewhere.

 

 

Though the village has a temple, yet the villagers consider the mosque as their heritage and part of their faith.

According to Imran Sagir, a resident of Biharsharif, earlier the name of this village was Mandi, as it was located in the middle of a market in the district. In ancient times when the Nalanda University existed there the place was a market. Hence the name of the village was Mandi.

People started calling it Maadi in colloquial language. The village would be regularly visited by floods and fires bringing misery to the people. To avert such natural disasters, the locals kept changing its name and at some stage, it became Neem Maadi. Soon the name was changed to Pav Maadi, then to Musharkat Maadi, and finally Ismailpur Maadi.

Legend has it that some 500 years ago, one day Hazrat Ismail was passing through the village when he stopped and decided to stay put there. He passed away in the village. Since that time there were no floods and natural fires in the village and people of all faith believed that the change was due to the blessings of the Sufi Saint.

Since then the village came to be called Ismailpur Maadi.

Hindus have a deep faith in the Sufi Saint Hazrat Ismail and they seek his blessings at the mosque and his tomb in front of it before starting a new phase of their lives. Like anewly-wed couple must start their married life by visiting and paying obeisance at the shrine of Hazrat Ismail and also the mosque.

The Hindu must visit the tomb and the mosque on all auspicious occasions and pray. They believe that anyone not visiting the mosque would be visited by bad luck.