Word: ayodhya
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...1980s The BJS becomes the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which bursts onto center stage by espousing anti-Muslim bigotry and calling for the demolition of a mosque at Ayodhya. The BJP claims the mosque was built over a temple to the Hindu...
...India's nationalist government finally losing patience with its Hindu extremist allies? Last Friday, Hindu hardliners staging a protest in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya found themselves under fire from an unexpected quarter: state and federal police wielding wooden lathes and batons and firing rubber bullets and tear gas. By day's end more than 1,000 Hindu activists were in custody and another 15,000 had been loaded on to buses and trains and sent away. An outraged Ashok Singhal, leader of the rally's organizer, the militant Hindu group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), was moved to declare...
...last month India's Supreme Court ordered a retrial. And last week's events signaled an apparent further widening of the gap between the Indian establishment and the VHP, when months of rancor over the BJP's delay in building a temple to the Hindu god Ram at Ayodhya spilled over into the streets...
...seeming split has huge significance. It was Hindu chauvinists?galvanized by a BJP campaign to undo brick by brick the 16th-century Mughal invasion of the subcontinent?who in 1992 ripped down a mosque supposedly built over a Hindu temple at Ayodhya; that helped propel the BJP to power on a wave of violent Hindu assertion. But upcoming polls may be forcing the BJP to distance itself from the VHP. With four state elections taking place on Dec. 1, and a general election due within the year, the BJP's more moderate coalition partners are pressing it to adopt...
...country's Hindu-Muslim troubles, an animosity that dates back hundreds of years, are hardly over. A bombing campaign by Islamic extremists is ongoing in Gujarat and Bombay, while the Hindu hard right, including the VHP, is now promising a national protest campaign over Ayodhya. Moreover, Bidwai points out, the VHP's overseas Indian members are big donors to the BJP. So while India may be witnessing a trial separation within the Hindu nationalist camp, no one is yet predicting a divorce...