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Varanasi, where Hindus travel to cremate their dead by the Ganges river, is the latest flashpoint in a running battle to claim centuries-old Islamic monuments for the country\u2019s majority faith.<\/p>\n
Campaigners have found an ideological patron in Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who last month inaugurated<\/a> a grand new temple on the site of a mosque notoriously demolished by Hindu zealots decades earlier.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are witnessing repression and cruelty,\u201d Yaseen, 78, told AFP<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not just the issue of one mosque. Their slogan says that \u2026 \u2018not even one tomb or mosque will be spared.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Yaseen is joint secretary of the Gyanvapi mosque, one of the largest Muslim congregations in the heart of Varanasi.<\/p>\n Hindus in the city have long maintained that the structure was built over a shrine to the Hindu deity Shiva during the Mughal empire that ruled over much of India centuries ago.<\/p>\n Muslim worshippers have been attending the mosque under police guard for years to prevent the simmering dispute from boiling over.<\/p>\n