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KOLKATA, INDIA, April 29, 2003: An ordinary middle-class Hindu family with a real estate business and a kerosene shop runs a mosque in Barasat near Kolkata. “I feel good that the Basu family looks after the mosque on their compound,” Muslim priest Mohammed Abu Bakkar says. “It shows that despite all the religious hatred, Muslims and Hindus are basically one.” The Basus, who live in a middle-class Hindu neighborhood dotted with small temples, have looked after the small Amanati mosque since 1964. Every Friday, around 50 to 70 Muslims of an adjoining area cram into the Amanati mosque on the Basu compound to pray. “We all pray to God, whether it is Allah or Ram. Why should there be disputes? We should think rationally,” said Dipak Basu, who is in his fifties and a practicing Hindu, as he sits next to the mosque on which his family is spending around US$1,266.41 to renovate. The Basus left Muslim-majority Bangladesh in 1964 after religious riots there and settled in Barasat. They exchanged their house with a Muslim family who left for Bangladesh. “The property we got in exchange had a mosque. At that time, some neighbors said that since we were Hindus, we should demolish the mosque on our property. But my father said the mosque was God’s place and we must look after it,” Basu said. “Some people call me (Osama) bin Laden because my family looks after a mosque being Hindus. But I know we are all humans first, and then Hindus or Muslims.”

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