Consider this. For over three centuries a Muslim family has been organizing Durga Puja in a village in Burdwan district of West Bengal.

The Khans of Samudragarh in Kalna sub-division had been presiding over the celebrations. Raja Mukul Khan, when head of the family, had recalled that failure to pay revenue arrears had led to forced conversion of a Brahmin family during the rule of Nawab Murshid Ali Khan, founder of Mushirabad.

At the time of conversion, the family used to preside over a large number of temples and perform many pujas, including Durga Puja. Conversion apparently did not prevent the family from continuing with its traditions. However, that would not surprise such people as they acknowledge that those professing different faiths are descendants of converts from the original inhabitants of the country. Temples continued to be looked after, and all pujas were performed, so much so that nobody could say that Muslims were maintaining Hindu temples.

By the way, a similar incident took place in Karnataka. In August 1986, at Gadag, 70 km from Hubli, a remote village which might not be easy to find on the nap of the State, a Muslim couple outbid all others in an auction to perform the first puja to the idol of Lord Ganesh on Ganesh Chaturthi. Consequently, Akbar Saheb Babchi and his wife offered the first puja to the Ganesh idol installed by Maruti Youth Association.

Why should a Muslim couple have been interested, in the first instance, in idol worship considering that Islam is an iconoclastic religion? And why should have they have paid the highest amount for what many Muslims the world over might have called an “un-Islamic” act.

The simple answer to either question is that Ganesh was, still is, and shall always be a part of the Indian pantheon, and for an overwhelming majority of Indian Muslims, the adjective is as important as is the noun, and that is a spin-off from Sufi Islam.

Thanks to a vigorous interaction between the Bhakti cult and Sufi Islam, more and more Hindus and Muslims no longer cling to a spiritual absolutism: they have begun to believe in spiritual relativism which would mean adoption of a magpie technique of culling the best points in every religion and amalgamating them. There are plenty of instances from contemporary India of Hindus and Muslims having put their lives on the line to save each other.