Word: ayodhya
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...organizes V chariot processions across India converging on Ayodhya. Lal Krishna Advani, head of the party, leads the biggest: a five-week march during which devotees attack Muslims, killing hundreds...
...that Vajpayee, who represents Lucknow in India's Parliament, has broadened the city's roads and improved the standard of living. But didn't Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rise to prominence by demanding the construction of a Hindu temple at the site of a mosque in Ayodhya, thereby creating the worst rift between Muslims and Hindus in modern India's history? Ayub acknowledges the BJP's Muslim-baiting past but counters that Vajpayee went to Pakistan earlier this month in an attempt to make peace with India's Muslim neighbor. "Would Atal Bihari have done that...
...very much in evidence as it swings into election mode?not by promising to fulfill key items of the Hindu-nationalist agenda, like building the temple in Ayodhya, but by talking economics. Finance Minister Jaswant Singh has announced a $2.7 billion handout to India's middle class by slashing taxes and import duties on foreign travel, cell phones and computers. "We don't want any agenda that is religious or divisive," says Pramod Mahajan, a key electoral strategist for the BJP. "We want to fight on economic, rational issues." The party, says Mahajan, is projecting Vajpayee as the only leader...
...issues such as Hindu nationalism. Under his prime ministership, however, the BJP-led coalition that has ruled India since 1998 has disappointed Hindu fundamentalists who hoped it would undo India's secular constitution. Last year, for instance, the government offered no support to Hindu volunteers who marched to Ayodhya to demand that the temple be built at the disputed site. Key elements of the BJP's right-wing support base, like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu-nationalist volunteer group, "feel that Vajpayee has done precious little to advance the Hindu agenda," says Harish Khare, a journalist...
...done little to upset the secular parties whose support it needs to stay in power, the BJP has also tried to reassure its right-wing base of its commitment to Hindu nationalism. Though the government has so far made little effort to build a Hindu temple at Ayodhya, the BJP's Mahajan says such plans remain part of his party's platform. "We will try to facilitate the construction of a temple through legal, constitutional means," he says. Muslim leaders complain that the BJP continues to promote a Hindu agenda by rewriting school textbooks to marginalize the place of Muslims...