Lessons of Religious Tolerance from "God's Own Country"

With all the news from abroad about trouble between Islamic extremists and the Western world you might think that as two Americans living in rural India next door to a mosque we might have some apprehension about our surrounds. Nothing could be further from the truth. On a Fulbright grant to research dance in India, my husband and I are living in the South Indian State of Kerala for ten months. Fate has arranged that we are renting our home from a local Muslim family, in a Muslim neighborhood, next door to a mosque and across the street from a Muslim school. We have excellent relations with our Muslim neighbors. Certainly, now that the Islamic holy month of Ramadan has started the calls to prayer that regularly echo out from the mosque loudspeakers have increased in length and frequency. But aside from waking us up in the night there are no problems being an American living among Muslims. It seems that Kerala is free from many of the problems of religious strife that plague the world. Perhaps it is because we are new here and we cannot see the whole picture, but it seems that there is a delightful acceptance of religious diversity here, Hindus, Muslims and Christians all live side by side as friends and companions in the Keralite culture. From our outside perspective Kerala is a land of peaceful religious tolerance. Muslims participate in Hindu festivals and Christians study traditional Hindu dance. There is a historic Jewish mosque in the city of Cochin. Hindu temples, Christian churches and mosques dot the landscape. At night firework explosions from the Hindu temples blend with evening prayers sung out from the mosques.

We have found friends here who are Christian, Hindu and Muslim. Naturally people assume that we are Christian. Usually, I do not bother to contradict them. To explain modern American pagan spiritual philosophy is definitely beyond my Malayalam (the local language) and generally beyond most of our friends' English skills. So, as long as people can identify us as belonging to one of the three major religions found here, we can move on to the more important questions about why my husband Grady has long hair, why we don't have any children and what we eat. It inevitably comes out that Grady does a lot of the cooking and that we share most of the housework. This causes a lot of giggles from both men and women. We like people here to know that we have a more cooperative marriage than most Keralalite families in terms of roles for chores and household duties. Though this makes us seem rather strange to the locals, we think it may give them some perspective on marriage in America. Gender roles seem to be very fixed here, but that is a subject for another article.

Last weekend we were invited to our Muslim friend Shaheem's home for lunch out in the middle of a sea of green rice paddies. We were fed a colossal amount of traditional Keralalite foods on a banana leaf. After we were properly stuffed full of food we went on a visit to their closest neighbors. The neighbors, who have an old style traditional Keralalite home, are Brahmins (the highest caste of Hindus). They are great friends with Shaheem and his Muslim family. It was so wonderful to experience the easy friendship that we felt between Shaheem and his Hindu neighbors as Hindus and Muslims have a history of strife in India. Shaheem's best friend is a Christian. There is a gentle acceptance of religious diversity here, and acceptance that is inspiring. The beautiful weather, lush vegetation, tranquil beaches, stunning mountains of Kerala all make it an attractive place to stay, but it is the people, their gentle warmth, and religious tolerance that make Kerala, as the locals are fond of saying, "God's own country."

Justine Lemos