Word: ayodhya
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...outbreak since 1993, the killings tested anew the fragile relations between India's 830 million Hindus and 150 million Muslims, and underscored the challenge Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee faces trying to settle their volcanic disputes. At the heart of last week's bloodshed was the northern city of Ayodhya, where in 1992 Hindu militants destroyed a 400-year-old mosque built on the site they believe to be the birthplace of the Hindu...
INDIA The Return of Sectarian Violence Nearly 60 hindus were burned alive Wednesday on a train returning from a disputed holy site at Ayodhya. A stone-throwing crowd, thought to be Muslims, stopped the train outside Godhra and set it alight. Hindus in Ahmedabad set Muslim businesses, shops and houses on fire. Muslims died inside their homes or were attacked in the streets. Violence spread, and despite a heavy troop presence the death toll in Gujarat state neared 350. Hindu activists want to build a temple at Ayodhya on the site of a mosque they destroyed 10 years...
...passions aroused by the temple movement helped propel the BJP into the political mainstream. In the first election following the Ayodhya violence, its parliamentary representation jumped from 2 seats to 86. Still, Vajpayee has to govern the world's biggest democracy, a self-consciously secular nation with some 150 million Muslim citizens, and as a result has always been careful to distance himself from the more extremist elements of Hindu nationalism. Today he rules by dint of a broad coalition of regional parties whose governing accord expressly precludes him from promoting the Ayodhya issue. Unless he's seen as coming...
...party's core support base. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), an organization with close ties to his own party, openly rejected Vajpayee's exhortation to call off the temple construction plan and vowed to proceed on March 15. More than 15,000 Hindu activists have moved into Ayodhya for the job, and the site is now guarded by hundreds of Indian security personnel. The train massacre has only deepened the VHP's determination to force a confrontation on the temple issue. With communal tensions already past boiling point, Ayodhya threatens once again to spark nationwide bloodletting...
...Prime Minister's difficulties navigating the Ayodhya issue are compounded by recent setbacks at the polls - his party was badly beaten in three recent regional elections, including in the key state of Uttar Pradesh, which includes Ayodhya. Hindu nationalists charge that Vajpayee's moderation on the temple issue cost him the local election. Now, that issue has put him on a collision course with an activist core constituency of his own party. It may be easier, right now, for a government with Hindu nationalist credentials to crack down on extremists than for one with no connection to the movement...