A symbolic mosque in Tharushah, Sindh
Master Chander was a Tharushah-born legendary singer, music director, and poet who migrated to Bombay during partition. Like many Sindhi Hindus, the scars of migration had cast into his core, and he wrote songs in the memory of his motherland, yearning to come back again.
In 1955, he got an opportunity to visit his hometown and give a concert there on the ground of the High School. The loudspeakers for the concert were borrowed from a nearby Masjid, which sprung into an outrage, the next day. Mobs marked the loudspeakers 'haram' and unsuitable for Masjid as they had been used for music.
Master Chander, was pitied at the fate of his hometown which once used to be the cohabitation place of Hindus and Muslims. Two landlords from different religions would sit together to settle the disputes in region. This city had given two remarkable personalities to the 20th century; Gobind Mali –an intellectual, and Master Chander himself.
Saddened by this unfortunate incident, he vowed to build a masjid at the place where the concert took place. That fine masjid, a symbol of resistance and acceptance, stares at the face of religious extremism –a norm in these times.
