Punjab never fails to surprise! Another heart-warming story of inter-communal camaraderie where Sikh helped in building a Mosque for Muslims which was said to be the oldest relic of Sarwarpur. A wealthy Sikh family in Sarwarpur was moved by the fact that Muslims had nowhere to worship in the village, decided to rebuild the old […]

Punjab never fails to surprise! Another heart-warming story of inter-communal camaraderie where Sikh helped in building a Mosque for Muslims which was said to be the oldest relic of Sarwarpur.

A wealthy Sikh family in Sarwarpur was moved by the fact that Muslims had nowhere to worship in the village, decided to rebuild the old mosque, using the original foundation, for the 11 Muslim families and some other migrant farm labourers in the village.

A native of Sarwarpur, Sajjan Singh Ghuman, who is now a businessman based in Birmingham, England, funded the entire project. “For the village’s majority population of Sikhs we had a Gurdwara. But the village Muslims had to trudge 10km to Samrala town to offer Friday and Eid prayers. We knew they wanted to get a mosque in the village,” said Mr Ghuman’s brother, Joga Singh, a wealthy farmer in Sarwarpur.

“On behalf of Sarwarpur Sikhs I approached my brother and he immediately agreed to fund the mosque. Muslims had a mosque here and it got lost in the riots. So, by returning the mosque to the Muslims we feel we have performed our duty, which had been long overdue.” Men from 300 Sikh and 11 Muslim families joined with construction workers to rebuild the mosque at the site where the original structure was razed in 1947.

Muslims raised the ‘Allah-o-Akbar’ slogan and offered the first prayer in the mosque since Partition under the leadership of the Shahi Imam who congratulated the Sikhs for their noble gesture and said that the Sikh people have proved with their magnanimous behavior, their tolerance and brotherhood, which has no match in the country,” reported the Milli Gazette, a Delhi-based English-language newspaper that reports on issues concerning Indian Muslims.

Mohammad Tufail, 80, the eldest Muslim resident of Sarwarpur, said the construction of the mosque was a “dream come true”. “Mohammad Jameel, a 32-year-old day labourer, said: “If our Sikh brothers did not come forward, we could have possibly never got a mosque in our village ? They are like our real brothers.”

“The building of this mosque by the Sikh community will serve as a good lesson for those communal leaders who often trigger riots in the country in the name of religion,” Maolana Ludhianvi said.

The rebuilding of a mosque by Sikhs, 63 years after it was demolished during Partition riots in 1947, has been hailed by social activists and religious leaders across India as a rare display of harmony in a country torn by frequent communal violence.

This heart warming gesture has surely bound our hearts with faith & sentiments of interfaith!