Hindu artisans work to restore Meerut’s Shahi Jama Masjid

MEERUT: Vinod, Pappu and Dharamveer are working tirelessly day and night to finish the task they were assigned in 2019. These stone carvers from the stone city of Hindaun in Rajasthan, are trying to complete the task of craving detailed inscriptions and verses of the holy Quran on one of the main gates of the Shahi Jama Masjid, the oldest mosque in the city.
With little understanding of what they are carving on the stone, the trio risks its health inhaling the dust and enduring the noise emitted by the stones to finish the task delayed by a year due to the outbreak of Covid. So far, these carvers have worked in over 40 mosques across India, including the Jama Masjid in Delhi.


The three have also worked in Delhi’s Swaminarayan Akshardham temple and several Jain temples across the country. But 60% of their work is concentrated on Islamic structures.
“We get more work in mosques as they still use the art of stone carving,” said Dharamveer, a fifth generation stone carver and probably the last as his children are not interested in pursuing the family profession.
Pappu said he did not want his children to follow in his footsteps. “This dust is making us ill. Over 50 people in our village have died over the past 10 years due to silicosis caused by inhaling silica dust.”
Once the task here is done, the trio proposes to move to Delhi to join others from Hindaun working there. The men from Hindaun are engaged in carving mosques in Nainital and Delhi currently.
Bablu Chaurasia, the contractor at the site, lamented that the stone artists of Hindaun may be the last to work with their hands as machines are being used as substitutes everywhere.
Meanwhile, the artisans are attracting students and visitors at the mosque who come to watch them handcraft inscriptions on stone at the Jama Masjid here.
According to Ata-Ur-Rehman, a teacher at the mosque, the building is around 700 years old and was built in 1306 by Sultan Nasiruddin Shah. Hence the need for repairs.
“The mosque management wants to preserve its history for which we were looking for people who could carve stones exactly the way it was done originally. The giant gates and domes have verses of the Quran and history of the mosque in Urdu inscribed on them. These artisans are doing the job with such dedication that it looks like they do it from the heart,” Rehman said.