An Attempt at Cohabitation

Last Wednesday, CIEE herded us into a bus at a very early hour in the morning. We drove about 45 minutes until we reached the Henry Martyn Institute, an Indian NGO located on the outskirts of the city.
At the institute we were greeted by a very pacific young man from Indiana, and a cheery young Muslim man with an impressive beard. They spent the morning giving us several lectures on the purpose, history and current projects of the NGO. I only heard about half of the information, as I was busy becoming well acquainted with the lovely Indian-style bathroom, dealing with my latest bout of involuntary purging...but what I did hear was very inspirational:

Apparently the Henry Martyn Institute was founded in the 1930s, by Christians, for the purpose of studying and thus learning to tolerate other religions, specifically Islam. The institute now houses scholars of all ages working on various projects and degrees. They also have started a variety of new endeavors, such as schools that integrate Muslim and Hindu students, vocational skills training programs like sewing, tailoring, etc., inexpensive health clinics and free testing for a variety of ailments.















We visited one of the integrated schools, a building deep in the heart of a Muslim/Hindu mixed neighborhood. The school was almost like a dollhouse, with rooms a fraction of the size of American classrooms, and staircases so skinny most Americans would not fit through. When all 21 of us CIEE students crammed into the classroom to hear the first graders sing us a song, we were literally standing on top of each other.



















We climbed up to the terrace of the building (all Indian buildings/homes have roof access, it's very cool), where we had an impressive view of the neighborhood. The Muslim man who was showing us around pointed to the right and said "this is where the Hindus live," then he gestured to the left and said, "this is where the Muslims live..." Sure enough, in the directions he pointed there was a temple and a mosque, respectively. He went on to say that you could tell the religion of the people who lived in each home, because they put out flags to identify themselves: orange for Hindu, green for Muslim.
It's a fact that tension and violence occur frequently as a result of the intolerance between religions in India, but the people we met working and researching at the Henry Martyn Institute were fiercely optimistic and ambitious in their efforts. In a country of such fundamental contrasts, it was inspiring to see at least one success in peaceful cohabitation.