IN GOOD FAITH

In an age when the idea of the religious community is determined by stereotypes andold fault lines, Saba Naqvi takes a journey across the country in search of her ownidentity among people, communities and shrines that challenge our predeterminednotions of what makes a Muslim or a Hindu. Along the way, she finds places and peopleon the periphery of absolute identities, culling out a unique space for themselves in anorthodox, exclusivist society. In Good Faith is a journalistic account of the discovery ofan 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 legendin Maharashtra; from the disputed origins of the Shirdi Sai Baba to shrines across theland 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, arguesthe author, these little islands of pluralism, music, art and culture, may yet provide acounter to fundamentalism.