G ajju Khan is smiling as he sits in an unfinished building in the northern Indian state of Punjab in the late afternoon. The 87-year-old is hopeful that before he dies he will hear the azaan , the Muslim call to prayer, echo across his village once again when the mosque is completed.

The last time he heard it here was when he was eight years old, living with his parents in Tira Maloya, a village in Chandigarh, not far from where he lives now.

He is also excited because the mosque has been funded almost entirely by the Sikhs and Hindus living in his village of Jakhiwal, in Fatehgarh Sahib district. Even though he fondly remembers how Sikh neighbours sheltered him and his brothers when brutal sectarian violence erupted during partition in 1947 , he never expected a house of worship to be rebuilt for the 18 Muslim families who remain in the village.

“This was my maternal home. My parents sent my two brothers and me here to save us from the bloodshed – they were killed back in our village,” says Khan.…