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03/18/2006:

"Braids of Faith at Baba's Temple: A Hindu-Muslim Idyll"

VARANASI, India — They came to banish ghosts, find a cure for eczema, seek succor for a cheating husband or an unruly child. Their feet bare, their heads covered, the believers, both Hindu and Muslim, entered the shrine in droves, stopping only to kiss each stair.

That was the scene March 9 at the tomb of Hazarat Syed Baba Bahadur Shahid, a Muslim, two days after homemade bombs tore through a Hindu temple and a railway station here in Hinduism's holiest city, raising the specter of Hindu-Muslim violence.

But such violence did not come to pass. Indeed, the scene at the Bahadur Shahid shrine served as a reminder of a fact often obscured by the spasms of ruthless sectarian violence that strike India: that after living cheek by jowl here for so many centuries, Hindus and Muslims often find themselves quietly braided together in worship as in daily life.
nytimes.com