A masjid and a temple within the same walled enclosure. The Hindus walking into the temple after their holy dip in the koneru and the Muslims doing their wazoo in the same water before entering their masjid. This was common for years at the Venkateshwara Temple and the Masjid e Rahmania in Alwal.
“Earlier when I came here 20 years ago we used to enter from the temple doorway, wash and enter the masjid. Now, we have built a small wazoo on the side and expanded the Masjid as the number of people has increased. But the friendliness and the amity has not changed. We share information about our festivals and make arrangements accordingly,” says Muhammad Shafiq, the moulvi at the masjid.
By belief The temple of Venkateshwara and the adjacent Masjid e Rahmania in Alwal
“We passed the village of Ulwal, its white pagoda peeping from among groves of tamarind and mango trees, and its large tank now glistening in the rays of the sun…” is how Phillip Meadows Taylor described the Venkateshwara Temple in Alwal through the eyes of the Thug Ameer Ali.
Now, the gopuram is hardly visible and has been painted golden yellow and amidst the tall buildings that have cropped up around it, the temple cannot be seen from a distance.
People in the area call it Temple Alwal for the number of temples in the locality. But this Temple is the oldest one and perhaps the reason for the origin of the name Alwal as the settlement was dominated by Alwars.
Sometime in the late 19th century, Maharaja Kishen Pershad built a garden palace near the temple just as he had built a deorhi near Moula Ali. He also built a choultry or resting place for visitors to the temple.
Maharaja Kishen Pershad was the Peshkar of Nizam Mahbub Ali Khan and later of Osman Ali as well. A man of cosmopolitan outlook, in the course of time he married three Hindu and four Muslim women. His children lived the way they wanted to following the faith of their mothers. Every year, the large rambling family would leave their palace in the city on one side of Musi and travel to the Venkateshwara Temple or the Moula Ali Dargah depending upon the Brahmothsavam or Urs.
In near wilderness with only a temple around, where would the Muslim members of Kishen Pershad’s family pray? He solved the problem by building a small masjid in one corner of the temple sharing the water for the ritual dip with that of wazoo.
But the family
“The road from here to the temple becomes one carnival. Traffic is blocked. Ferris wheel, swings are installed in this open space. By evening it becomes difficult to walk as people from surrounding areas come to pray at the temple. Children have a gala time,” says Vinay Abhishek, who grew up in the area.
How old is the temple? That’s intriguing question in the absence of any written records. The entrance has a signboard announcing that the temple is 400 years old. The priests could only say that the temple is very old. The clues to the age of the temple can be spotted in the kalyana mandapam with machined granite pillars, the flooring of the gundam of the temple and the ample space for pradakshina.
But many other structures created to fulfill the needs of the society like the tin sheet for shade during summer and smaller temples paid for by benefactors remove the sense of awe Ameer Ali felt. Now, standing on the terrace of the walkway around the temple shows the gopuram in line with the dhwaja sthambam and the single minaret of Rahmania Masjid. A symbol of the much fabled Gunga Jamuni tehzeeb that Hyderabadis speak about with fondness.
A happy city
Mahraja Kishen Pershad wrote poetry in Persian and Urdu under the pen name of Shad meaning happy. Shadnagar on the outskirts of Hyderabad is a tribute to that name. A township named after the pen name of a poet!
