For a village that seemed to provide the haters yet another stick to bash the Hindu society with, such scenes of bonhomie were surprising.

We learnt that a group that works for Hindu rights was on a visit to the village after reading reports of discrimination in the media, and had mobilised villagers to perform a collective havan.

Satish Vaid, a volunteer with the group named Agniveer, told Swarajya that they had come from New Delhi with the aim of helping Dalits enter the temple. “Whenever we come across such cases in the media, we make sure the Dalits enter the temple and members of all castes perform a symbolic havan to end the animosity,” he said.

However, the team did not need to put much effort in convincing the villagers unlike other cases they have dealt with in the state, he said. “While caste barriers exist, the situation here is much better than other villages we have done similar work in. Things weren’t exactly how they was portrayed in the media,” he said.

Amit Tiwari, another volunteer with Agniveer, said, "We found out that after the baba was ousted, Dalits began to offer prayers at the samadhi like they always had."

Conversations with villagers and the police further revealed that the village was perhaps wrongly demonised in the first place.

No temple in the village discriminated on the basis of caste, villagers said. Suresh Kumar, a Jaatav and a member of gram panchayat, told Swarajya that the village has more than 15 big and small temples and all of them allow entry to all caste groups including Dalits. (Swarajya later visited two temples and found this to be true.)

"The problem happened only at this samadhi and for the first time. It was a case of personal enmity between two groups," he said.