By Mohammed Talha Siddi Bapa
Mangaluru is no stranger to communal tension. Coastal Karnataka has, over the years, witnessed intense Hindutva mobilisation, moral policing, hate campaigns and retaliatory violence, giving the region an unenviable reputation for communal polarisation. It is against this background that a major Seerat programme at Mangaluru’s Town Hall acquires significance. A substantial presence of non-Muslims at a public programme on Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was not merely a matter of attendance; it showed that conversation can still find space where suspicion has often been cultivated.
Organised by Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Mangaluru, as part of its statewide Seerat campaign, the seminar took up the theme “Prophet Muhammad: Prejudices and Realities in Contemporary India.” Rather than remaining an internal Muslim gathering, it brought people of different faiths into a conversation about the Prophet and the relevance of his teachings to contemporary society.
The most striking intervention came from Dr. H.V. Vasu, head of the Ee Dina media group. He approached Prophet Muhammad ﷺ not through theological argument but through a simple human question: what does it mean to feel another person’s pain?
“Temples, mosques and churches are increasing, but spirituality is declining,” he said. For Vasu, spirituality is not measured by the visibility of religion but by what it does to human conduct. Recalling a formulation of Ibrahim Saeed, he explained: “I am hungry” is physical; understanding another person’s hunger is intellectual; feeling that another person’s hunger is my hunger is spiritual.
He cited the Covid period as an example. When Muslims stepped forward to perform the last rites of people whose bodies had been left without relatives able or willing to handle them, Vasu said, that was spirituality in action. Religion had moved beyond identity and ritual to sharing another human being’s grief.
He saw the same spirit in the teachings of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ about the poor, neighbours and social responsibility. The Prophet, he said, gave the sharing of wealth a religious and moral dimension and, in 7th-century Madinah, brought different communities together under a civic arrangement that recognised equality.
Vasu’s argument about power was equally pointed. Politics alone, he said, cannot make those who possess authority humble or ensure just treatment of society’s weakest. Spirituality is also necessary. The ability to forgive those who had inflicted suffering upon him was something Prophet Muhammad ﷺ not only preached but demonstrated in his own life.
For Vasu, therefore, the Prophet cannot be confined to Muslims alone. “The teachings of Prophet Muhammad are universal,” he said.
At a time when religious identities are increasingly turned against one another, he called for an effort to overcome prejudice and live together. There is, he said, an urgent need to remove misconceptions surrounding the Prophet and Muslims, and a time must come when religion, God and spirituality bring people together rather than set them against one another.
That concern with prejudice was taken further by A.K. Kukkila, editor of Sanmarga Group Media. He said Prophet Muhammad brought the different sections of Madinah together, formulated a common civic framework, established justice and equality, and created a society without authoritarian rule. He also referred to hostile representations of Islam and Prophet Muhammad in European polemical literature and their later entry into India through colonial literature. Such inherited perceptions, he argued, cannot simply be allowed to circulate as fact; they must be confronted through informed dialogue and discussion.
Father Valerian D’Souza, parish priest of Rosario Church, Mangaluru, approached the Prophet through another contemporary question: human equality. Recalling the Prophet’s teaching that an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab and a white person no superiority over a black person, he said all human beings are equal. Sacred texts, he urged, should not merely be read; their values should be reflected in life and become a means of inner transformation.
Sabiha Fatima, editor of the monthly Anupama Mahila, addressed prejudices surrounding Muslim women, including the belief that Islam denies them freedom and confines them to the home. She pointed to the Prophet’s participation in household work and spoke about Islamic provisions concerning marriage, polygamy, talaq and khula, arguing that perceptions about Muslim women need to be tested against what the religion actually teaches.
Presiding over the programme, Ishaq Puttur of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, said the Prophet did not impose religion through force or inducement. He conveyed what he believed to be divine guidance and left people to respond to it. When he lacked power, he endured persecution; when he acquired power, he forgave. Religion, Puttur said, is meant to be practised, not used as a reason to quarrel.
Also present were U.H. Umar, president of the Karnataka Beary Sahitya Academy; Syed Ismail, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Mangaluru zonal convener; K.M. Ashraf, JIH Mangaluru city president; and Sajida Momin, Dakshina Kannada district convener of the JIH Women’s Wing. Abdul Latheef Aliyar opened the programme with a recitation from the Qur’an, while Abdul Kabir Kulai welcomed the gathering. Shaheeda Umar and Uba Zukiya conducted the proceedings.
The significance of the evening, however, went beyond individual speeches. A Seerat gathering can easily become an occasion where Muslims speak to Muslims about a Prophet they already love. At Mangaluru Town Hall, a substantial number of non-Muslims came, listened and participated in a discussion in which Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was presented through questions that concern everyone: compassion, equality, justice, dignity and coexistence.
One programme cannot erase prejudice or undo years of communal polarisation. But prejudice survives when communities stop meeting and stereotypes are allowed to speak in place of people. The Town Hall gathering attempted the opposite. It created a public space where people could encounter Prophet Muhammad ﷺ beyond inherited images and hear his life discussed by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Perhaps the evening’s message was best contained in its simplest sentence: when another person’s hunger becomes my hunger, spirituality has begun.
