KOPPAL: A Muslim civil contractor who came up the hard way sponsored the weddings of five Hindu couples to mark the inauguration of a wedding hall constructed by him in Koppal district on Sunday.
Rahimansab D Doddamani, 48, a Class I contractor from Hirebannigol village in Kushtagi taluk, spent Rs 3 lakh on the weddings, including food and mangalasutra. The couples are from Lingayat, Kuruba and Dalit communities. He told TOI that it was payback time for him as he had experienced poverty firsthand and seen people suffer, especially after the outbreak of Covid and in the lockdowns that followed.
The marriages were solemnised in the new hall at Hirebannigol Cross. He and his wife Imambi said they make no distinction on caste, religion or financial status and they were helped by people from all faiths when they were going through a tough phase.
Doddamani said that after the death of his father about 25 years ago, his family barely managed two basic meals a day. “Despite the hard times, my mother Ladbi and elder brother Allasab (a gram panchayat bill collector) encouraged me to complete BSc and Hindi BEd. I was a government high school teacher, but lost the job due to technical reasons,” he said.
Later, villagers asked him to contest gram panchayat elections and he became panchayat president. “I held the position no doubt, but I was not earning enough to run the family. That was when a taluk panchayat engineer encouraged me to work as contractor two decades ago. Now, I’m a Class I contractor with 30 drivers on the rolls. Besides, I run a bitumen factory in Hirebannigol,” he said.
His wife Imambi said they have named the wedding hall after APJ Abdul Kalam and the podium after Atal Bihari Vajpayee – “two icons who stood for communal harmony”.
She said their objective is to let even people without enough resources to conduct events. After finalising the date of the hall’s inauguration, the couple sent out an open invitation for the poor to come forward and conduct marriages free at the newly built hall. “Having seen people suffer during Covid, we decided to bear all expenses of these marriages as a token of gesture and gratitude towards society. We will rent out the hall for Rs 21,000, including utensils and other amenities, to help the poor people,” she said.
Elected representatives from the region, religious leaders from different faiths and government officials attended the event on Sunday.