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Amrit Dhillon

Just four hours drive from Delhi, a dusty Muslim village has become a Taleban-like enclave where TV, films, music and dancing are banned as  gunah or 'sinful'.
But the villagers, poor and illiterate with small landholdings, have never even heard of the Taleban.
The children who scamper all over Mundogari village - many families have over nine children - look blankly when asked to name the Indian prime minister or give their age.
It is only the maulvi, or religious teacher, who provides guidance - and he has issued a fatwa against TV, films and music as 'corrupting' influences.
'He says children will get the wrong ideas about love and dating from TV. We used to watch television but he says it is un-Islamic,' said farmer Afsar Ali.
Mundogari lies off the Grand Trunk Road at Karnal in north India about 170 km from the  capital.
From a distance, the village looks picturesque with poplar, papaya, and banana trees; thatched cow-dung silos and two minarets rising up from an otherwise flat skyline, with not a single television antenna in sight.
Closer up, the poverty becomes apparent: pools of stagnant water, open sewers, dust and sparsely furnished homes.
Sitting outside a barber's shop where three toddlers are getting a trim, Jamshed Ali grins as he admits that he enjoys Hindi film songs. 'A song can cheer you up when you're feeling low,' he says. 'But the Koran is against it.'
In Mundogari, even photography is prohibited. The only exception is if a photograph is required for a passport application. No photographs hang in homes.
'We don't take photographs at weddings or video them. No woman goes outside without covering herself,' said Mr Ali. The only concession is listening to the news on the radio.
Karnal social worker Raj Singh Chaudhury first began visiting the village when he became aware of the abysmal attendance at the school.
The teacher, too, is absent so often that parents prefer to send their children to the village madrassa, where they learn Urdu, Arabic, and the Koran.
'It's because they are uneducated that they blindly follow these rules,'  said Mr Chaudhury. He worries about the children's future as without education, they won't get jobs.
Mr Chaudhury urges villagers to limit the size of their families. 'But they do what the maulvi says, and he says that Allah will look after all their children,' laments  Mr Chaudhury.
With 140 million Muslims in India, the spectrum of belief among them is vast. It ranges from the wine-drinking liberal who never visits the mosque to the fanatically orthodox.
Muslims are dispersed all over the country, but Mundogari is believed to be the only place in India where the simple recreations enjoyed in the rest of the country are so reviled.
Some say they have never watched television or listened to music. Others say they used to, but the new maulvi banned it when he arrived a year ago from another region.
The maulvi, Shakeel Mohammed, 26, smiles patiently as he sits on the charpoy (string cot) in his room explaining his prohibitions.
His room displays the same poverty as the rest of the village. A charpoy, stainless steel utensils stored on a shelf and clothes hanging on a wire strung across one wall.
'It's not healthy for children to watch naked women on TV or listen to songs about love. They will start smoking, drinking and dating. It will spoil their character,' said Mr Mohammed.
When asked about Muslim film stars and composers in Bollywood, Mr Mohammed shrugs: 'For them singing and dancing is about money. For us, it's a question of religion.'
Some young men have grumbled  quietly about the death of entertainment. But no one rebels, settling instead for a sneak 'fix' of TV whenever they visit Karnal or another village.
Jamshed Ali, who works in a property dealer's office in Karnal, admits watching TV at work. 'Is there anyone who doesn't enjoy it? My neighbour bought a TV some months ago. There was so much social pressure, he had to watch it secretly, but in the end he sold it,' he said.
As dusk falls and the cattle amble home, their neck bells tinkling, the village falls silent.
'There's nothing to do,' said 12-year-old Aftab, who helps his father in the fields. 'If I complain, my father tells me to go to the mosque.'



The Indian village where music and TV are banned