For Ramveer Kashyap, a 59-year-old mason in Muzaffarnagar’s Nanheda village, taking care of the lone 120-year-old mosque is a “religious” duty. At daybreak, he cleans up the mosque, lights a candle in the evening and even gets the structure whitewashed once before every Ramzan. At the height of communal tension during the infamous 2013 riots, when a group of rioters decided to demolish the mosque, Kashyap risked his life to save it and gathered village men in his support.
“My faith teaches me to respect all places of worship,” he told TOI.
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Surprisingly, the village doesn’t have a single Muslim inhabitant. Located 40 km from the district headquarters, Nanheda is a Jat-dominated village with a few Dalits and OBCs residing here.