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CHAPTER 2
Curiosity About Action
Some of them even committed suicide. But, of course, all of them could not be expected to kill themselves. Men of staunch faith, they yet looked for an alternative because of their mistaken belief. Even today the Muslims of the Hamirpur village solemnize their weddings like Hindus. Only at the end of the ceremony a mullah is brought in to perform the nikah ceremony. All of them were once faithful Hindus and all of them are now faithful Muslims.
The catastrophe, as we have seen, was brought about by nothing more then the prevailing Hindu belief that their water would be defiled if it was touched by a Muslim. The misguided villagers were convinced that they had lost their dharm by using defiled water. So that is what dharm had been reduced to in medieval India. It had turned into something like the plant whose leaves shrink and droop at being touched. We call this plant Lajwanti (the shy one). Its leaves contract if you just touch them, but they expand and firm up when you remove your hand. What a great pity that a mere plant revives as soon as the hand that touched it moves away, but the dharm of the Hamirpur villagers withered so irreversibly that it could never revive again.
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