In Good Faith: A Journey in Search of an Unknown India

In an age when the idea of the religious community is determined by stereotypes and old fault lines, Saba Naqvi takes a journey across the country in search of her own identity among people, communities and shrines that challenge our predetermined notions of what makes a Muslim or a Hindu. Along the way, she finds places and people on the periphery of absolute identities, culling out a unique space for themselves in an orthodox, exclusivist society. In Good Faith is a journalistic account of the discovery of an India that at times defies belief?the India of faraway shrines in quaint little places, and of communities and individuals who reach out to a common God. From the Muslim forest goddess of Bengal to an unknown facet of the Shivaji legend in Maharashtra; from the disputed origins of the Shirdi Sai Baba to shrines across the land that are both temple and dargah?this book shows how, in these little pockets, the idea of a tolerant India still survives. These neglected ground realities, argues the author, these little islands of pluralism, music, art and culture, may yet provide a counter to fundamentalism.