Word: ayodhya
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...purely secular state that respects all religions equally - is looking increasingly like some hoary fantasy. Vajpayee and his BJP claim to believe in secularism, but they came to power by banging the drum of Hindu pride - and fanning hatred of the Muslim minority - by stirring things up in Ayodhya, where a revered Hindu deity was supposedly born. The party has been in power in Delhi twice for a total of four years, and there hadn't been a single communal riot, giving widespread hope that the BJP had gone centrist and wouldn't allow its chauvinistic urges to disrupt...
...ayodhya is a name mostly associated with conflict, like Beirut or Belfast. But in reality it's a charming temple town on the banks of the Saryu River just south of the Himalayas. It has plenty of places of worship, mostly Hindu but also Muslim. Its renown is based on the fact that Rama, hero of the eponymous epic Ramayana, is believed to have been born there...
...16th century, the fiery invader Babur swooped down from present-day Afghanistan to begin his conquest of Hindu India, which started three centuries of foreign rule known as the Mogul period. In 1528, one of his noblemen built a mosque in Ayodhya. History suggests the Muslim invaders dismantled a Hindu temple to do so. That's the building and the site that is provenance of the current conflict: some Hindus say the temple, and then the mosque, sat on the actual birthplace of Rama. For a century-and-a-half, Hindus and Muslims squabbled over the mosque. For Hindus, reclaiming...
...provided by the Muslim mobs of Calcutta who ravaged the city in 1946. In 1984, Sikhs were identified, torched and killed by sword and bullet after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. In 1992 the destruction of a mosque on a disputed spot in the holy city of Ayodhya, where the Himalayas begin to meet the plains, was followed by wanton nationwide riots in which Muslims were surrounded, terrorized and massacred; rape was thrown in for evil measure in cities like Surat in polarized Gujarat, where it was also videotaped as proof of rapine conquest...
...Prime Minister. His ability to keep contradictions under control was strained with the call given by sadhus and zealots to start construction of a temple at the disputed site this month; it snapped when Muslim fanatics attacked a train in Godhra, Gujarat, and killed Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya. In its first test of lynch-mob politics, the government of Vajpayee in New Delhi failed, while the BJP administration in Gujarat could barely conceal its support for those mobs. Paradoxically, Muslim fundamentalists, like the hectoring, acid-tongued Syed Shahabuddin, created a platform for the Hindu resurgence in the 1980s with...