I think what you have seen in recent years and in the modern period is the territorialisation of the imagination, if you like,

the attempt to pin it down to specific places.

Hello, I'm Neil McGregor, and in this series of podcasts, I'm looking at objects to see how shared beliefs help shape societies.

In these programmes, we explore how different communities

and different societies relate to their gods.

In this episode, we explore how different religions exist side by side,

how well or how badly the gods live together. This is the BBC.

Our Lady of Glory is a tall brick church built in the best English Gothic style. And as I stand

on its steps, I see on the other side of the road, right opposite me, a bright green mosque

whose walls butt up against the orange and yellow temple of Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god.

A few hundred yards my left is the synagogue, and the same distance to my right, the Zoroastrian

fire temple.

And if I go just a little further afield,

I'll come to a giant sanctuary and then to a Buddhist temple.

It may sound like a fantasy theme park for world religions,

but it is, of course, very real, very modern, very noisy Mumbai

on a busy weekday evening.

Multilingual, multiracial, multi-faith Mumbai.

A city built over the last 300 years by Christians and Hindus, Parsis and Jews,

Muslims and Jainz, all living cheek by Jal in what has been, for the most part,

astonishingly harmonious coexistence. In India, the world's

major faiths are practiced side by side in greater numbers than anywhere else in the world.

...