Standing on a four-cottah plot in a neighbourhood some 26km north of Calcutta, Amanati Masjid can be a blink-and-miss structure for the uninitiated. In reality, it is a shrine to Bengal’s culture of inclusiveness, especially when the politics of religious polarisation is rearing its ugly head in the state.
Partha’s grandfather shifted to Barasat’s Nabapally in the aftermath of the 1964 riots, swapping his family land in Bangladesh’s Khulna with that of a Muslim family in Barasat’s Nabapally. After shifting base, the Basu family found a “barren and almost desolate” mosque standing in the middle of the land. The property documents had no mention of the structure.