Prayer, worship and tolerance

Recently, four men recited Hanuman chalisa at a mosque in Mathura. Reportedly, they claimed that it was in “fitting response” to a man performing namaz at Nand Baba temple nearby. These events have rightly raised the question as to why a person of one religion cannot pray at the place of worship of another religion. To address this question, we need to distinguish between worship and prayer.

Worship and prayer

Temples, mosques and churches are places of worship for Hindus, Muslims and Christians, respectively, and considered holy by those religionists. Worship includes ceremony, and is an expression of reverence and adoration for a deity. It consists of certain procedures or rituals, characteristic of the particular religion or faith, such as performing aarti or reciting scriptural verses, etc., by Hindus; bending down, moving the hands in a prescribed manner, etc., while facing towards Mecca, by Muslims; kneeling and making signs of the cross, etc., by Christians. It may include wearing or not wearing certain forms or items of dress.

Prayer in a religious sense is a person’s thought or softly uttered words addressed to a divine entity, and may include making certain wishes. Adherents of different religions perform acts of worship for an individual to better focus or concentrate on the entity being prayed to, or for observance of cultural tradition, or to express solidarity with co-religionists. These acts are within appropriately constructed and furnished premises. All these are verbal, physical or architectural acts, expressing conformity with the dogma of the particular religion.

Worship is thus prayer with added ritual or ceremony. The distinction between worship and prayer is also clear in many Indian languages – worship is pooja (Urdu ibadat) and prayer is prarthana (Urdu iltija).

Conforming to custom

When an individual prays in any place of worship in conformity with the custom, tradition, procedures and rituals of that place of worship, he/she attracts no attention. The intention is to pray, not to attract attention or to “make a statement”.

Wearing religion-neutral clothing, a person reciting Gayathri mantra quietly inside a temple would not attract attention, just as a person entering a mosque and worshipping as Muslims do would not. But even a Muslim who does not conform to religious custom in a mosque, or a Hindu who does not conform to Hindu custom in a temple attracts adverse attention. However, a Hindu entering a mosque with tilak on his forehead or reciting a verse from Hindu scriptures, would certainly attract attention, most probably adverse, even if he went there genuinely to pray. Likewise, with genuine desire to pray, a Muslim man wearing his prayer cap or a woman wearing hijab entering a temple, and performing the ritual of namaz, would attract adverse attention.

It is departure or divergence from custom/tradition in a place of worship which attracts attention. Attracting attention in whatever manner, to differences in custom/tradition may have spoken or unspoken motivations. A person who performs a divergent act may have honourable or disruptive motives, but in either case, he attracts attention. Also, an observer of the divergent act may take note of it appreciatively, critically or strongly negatively, depending upon several factors at the personal, social or political level.

All goes well when the person who performs a divergent act is well-intentioned, and also an observer of it takes an appreciative or non-critical view. But the reality is otherwise, as the news reports from Mathura indicate. The man who performed namaz in the temple was sent to 14 days’ judicial custody for “promoting enmity between religions” and “defiling a place of worship”, and the men who “fittingly” responded to it by reciting Hanuman chalisa at a mosque were detained by Police.

What is common between recitation of Hindu scripture at a mosque in “fitting” response to namaz at a temple is the deliberate or possibly inadvertent departure from custom, which drew the attention of the opposite religionists, and had unexpected, unhappy consequences.

Cultural diversity

There are many places of Hindu, Muslim and Christian worship across the country at which persons belonging to any religion go to pray, with faith in their hearts and minds that their prayers will be answered. For such people, faith in prayer clearly supercedes the ritual of religious worship, when they conform to the religious practice of the particular place of worship. There are also many instances of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs looking after the place of worship of a different religion. But even while understanding that prayer to any deity can be done anywhere by anybody, they always respect the custom or ritual within that place of worship. They understand that prayer is spiritual while worship is cultural.

Building religion-neutral houses of worship with common rituals may further inter-religious amity and understanding. But it would be an attempt to remove the differences in religious practices, and amount to cultural homogenisation. The desirability of this is questionable.

The way forward

In Indian Armed Forces units and establishments, places of worship of different religions are sometimes housed in the same building, even the same room, when space is at a premium as in some field areas. However, each religion has its assigned space, provided with its own religious symbols and ambience. Soldiers belonging to whichever faith may, and often do, pray and worship in the space assigned to another religion, but observe the custom and ritual of that religion. Such places are called “sarvadharma sthal”, in keeping with secular practice. They implicitly observe cross-religion tolerance, respect and acceptance of differences in customs and traditions.

At the wider social level, only a de-politicised clergy and laity realising this, can achieve lasting communal harmony and peace in society. Individual acts, howsoever well-intentioned, are apt to be misunderstood, especially in the present times.

(Maj Gen (retd) S G Vombatkere, VSM, focuses on development, strategic and social issues, using cross-discipline study and systems thinking)