Sep 03, 2006 :: Muslim bhajan singers

Sheikh Muslims are a community that lives near Mohalla Sayid Hassan, that’s on the way from Delhi’s Connaught Place to Karol Bagh. For 400 years, Muslim quawwali singers living around a dargah here have not felt any conflict singing the praise of Sikh gurus, Krishna, Durga and Ganesha.

Shabbir Hussain, a star among them has sung at Badrinath, the Puri Jagannath Temple, Delhi’s Gurdwaras and even Chattarpur Mandir whose orthodoxy does not permit film playback singers to perform. Another of the famous Sheikh Muslims, Sajan Shola says he always begins a concert with an invocation to Ganesh. Another, Jameel Bharti says, “I don’t know much but ours is an art, and art has no religion, or it encompasses all reigions.”

This article appears at a time when a controversy rages across the country as some Muslim leaders have declared the patriotic song ‘Vande Mataram’, idolatrous and anti-Islamic.