HEARTWARMING gestures have recently emerged from Punjab’s Jakhwali village, where Sikh and Hindu families came together to build a mosque for their Muslim friends. This beautiful display of camaraderie is a shining example of national unity in action. What is more, there are several such examples of mutual respect and help among people of different religions and faiths which need to be better known today.
The report being discussed here is from Shariq Majeed in The Times of India (26 December, 2025). Located in Fatehgarh Sahib district, Jakhwali is a village with a diverse population, where people of different faiths have lived in harmony for years. They participate in each other’s religious events and extend a helping hand. When the Muslim community needed a mosque, Bibi Rajinder Kaur, an elderly Sikh lady, donated land, and other Sikh and Hindu families pitched in with financial donations and support.
The report quoted former sarpanch of the village Ajaib Singh from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as saying that when a temple was built Muslims and Sikhs had also extended all assistance and likewise all communities contributed their bit in the construction of the gurdwara He added, “This is how we live. We will contribute till the last brick is laid and the mosque is complete.”
When Bibi Rajinder Kaur was asked for her comments on her land donation she replied, “We feel very happy that they (Muslim friends) will be happy.” What a beautiful statement this great lady has made.
Such examples of inter-faith harmony, mutual help and cooperation exist in many places and should be publicised. Although in recent years we have heard more about the other kind of events in history, the wider picture of history is one of a large number of temples being maintained or even built with the help of Muslim rulers. On the other side, several Hindu rulers helped in the maintenance of mosques. This was accepted and supported by people of various communities who entered into innumerable relationships of mutual help and cooperation in daily life.
The unity of Hindus and Muslims was clearly visible in the great uprising of 1857 when they joined hands in many places to fight colonial rule.
As an example of harmony, let us look at the policy of Mughal rulers towards the temples of Vrindavan- Mathura region. This Hindu pilgrimage was nearest to Delhi and Agra, the two main centres of the Mughal rule and so it is of significance to know the relationship which the Mughal rulers had with the temples of Mathura and Vrindavan and with their priests and devotees. Dozens of documents of those days are available to reveal the policy of Akbar, Jahangir and Shahjahan towards these temples. These documents have been available in Vrindavan Research Institute and in some of the temples. These have been studied by Tarapada Mukerjee and Irfan Habib in the papers presented at the 48th and 49th session of Indian History Congress.
According to the study of Mukerjee and Habib, based on documents of Mughal days, Akbar enlarged and consolidated all grants to temples and temple-servers in the Mathura region by his farmaans (dated 27th August, 1598 and 11thSeptember, 1598) in Vrindavan, Mathura and their environs. Jahangir not only continued the grants, he substantially added to them. Jahangir added at least two temples to the list of 35 already supported by Akbar’s grant of 1598, In addition, he provided 121 bighas of land for five families of temple sevaks. Jahangir also visited Vrindavan temples in 1620.
The documents also reveal that whenever temple priests had any serious problem, they approached Mughal rulers or their senior officials and generally the rulers/officials took immediate corrective action. There were occasions when water supply to Radha Kund was stopped, tax was imposed on the cattle kept by temples, some trees around a temple were cut, and gardeners of temples were relegated to be forced labourers. In all these cases, complaints were made by priests or other temple officials to Mughal rulers or their viceregents, prompting immediate and satisfactory actions. The fact that the priests approached the rulers/officials even for problems which were not very important indicates that they expected to get favourable verdicts from them.
In fact, there are documents to show that even when there were disputes among two priests or other religious persons connected with temples, the intervention of Mughal rulers or their officials was sought to settle the dispute and the example of at least one such dispute between Damodardas Radhaballabh and Kishan Chaitan is given in one of the documents.
The Nawabs of Oudh gave several grants to the temples of Ayodhya and provided them protection in other ways. The Diwan of Nawab Safdarjung built several temples in Ayodhya and arranged for the repair of other temples. Nawab Safdarjung gave land for the construction of a temple. Mirza Asaf-ud-Daula’s diwan gave further help for the construction of a temple.
It should be added that several Hindu kings, not only those who were subordinate to Mughals but also those who were independent, reciprocated this gesture. For example, the great king Shivaji built a mosque at a very prominent place.
It is very important to remember all the great traditions of unity and harmony. All the greatest teachers and saints of our history have shown us the path of inter-faith harmony and unity and we should always cherish those traditions.
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Bharat Dogra writes extensively on environment, development and welfare issues. The views expressed here are the writer’s own, and Clarion India does not necessarily subscribe to them. He can be reached at: bharatdogra1956@gmail.com
