When a Hindu Paints Quranic Verses: United We Stand

THE WEEKEND LEADER
By Stella Paul

Chauhan’s story is as fascinating as his brush strokes

INDIA -- December, 1991. Hyderabad, a city in the southern part of India, was in turmoil: a violent conflict had erupted between the city’s two dominant communities – Hindus and Muslims.  Amidst the deafening silence of curfew and occasional gun shots, Anil Chauhan –a 24-year old Hindu man and an aspiring calligrapher, sat inside one of the tiny houses with a twig pen. With light yet swift strokes of the pen, he was writing the verse 36 of Sura Yaseen on a paper canvas, his heart completely lost in the art of creation. “Glory be to Him, Who has created all the pairs of that which the earth produces, as well as of their own (human) kind (male and female), and of that which they know not,” he wrote on, even as the lane outside his reverberated with cries of anger and hatred.Art, for this man, is never for the sake of art alone, but a divine tool to create a beautiful world of peace and brotherhood. [link]