Word: ayodhya
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...latest troubles began when a group of Hindu pilgrims returning by train from Ayodhya, where they had gone to participate in rituals they hoped were a prelude to building a temple on the disputed site, passed through Godhra. Suddenly, someone pulled the emergency brake. The train halted in a mostly Muslim neighborhood, where a mob was waiting with stones, knives and gasoline. The horde burned down coaches occupied by pilgrims and murdered any it could catch. Most of the 58 victims were women and children, unable to outrun their predators...
...with sticks, stones and bottles of gasoline and went hunting. At least 65 people were killed, their remains left outside their burned homes. After all the Muslims had died or fled, a Hindu mob surrounded the local mosque and started to break it down, imitating the 1992 episode at Ayodhya. Not a policeman could be seen. One rioter said with pride, "We did this ourselves." Another man boasted that he had killed nine Muslims. "I was acting for all Hindus," he said...
Prime Minister Vajpayee has since announced that in the future pilgrims will be stopped from reaching Ayodhya and workers banned from erecting a new temple there. Hindu extremists vowed that they were undeterred. In Ahmadabad, 1,300 Indian soldiers patrolled uneasy streets. The Muslim girl Afsana awoke in a hospital, with burns so severe she could not lie on her back. "Where will I go now?" she asked. "I had such a big family, and all of them are dead. I just wish I had someone to live...
...Last week, almost 56 years later, it happened again. A train ferrying a group of Hindu pilgrims from the temple town of Ayodhya in central India pulled into the western town of Godhra shortly after dawn, where a group of local Muslims was waiting. As the engine gathered speed leaving Godhra, someone pulled the emergency brake chain and attackers stormed the passenger cars. They hurled bottles filled with gasoline, setting coaches aflame. Able-bodied men managed to escape the conflagration; 40 of the 58 deaths were of women and children charred on board...
...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...