5 February 2003
Financial Times – Asia Pacific
By Edward Luce in New Delhi
Rightwing Hindu groups in India are to launch a national campaign to build a temple in the town of Ayodhya on the site of a former mosque that was demolished by amob 10 years ago.
Atal Behari Vajpayee, India’s prime minister, yesterday said he wanted the dispute – which has aggravated relations between the country’s majority Hindu and minority Muslim communities – to be resolved through peaceful mediation.
Mr Vajpayee yesterday met the Kanchi Shankaracharya, a prominent Hindu religious figure, who has offered to mediate between the Vishwa Hindu Parishad – the World Council of Hindus – and Muslim groups seeking to rebuild their mosque on the disputed site.
The VHP, which is closely allied to Mr Vajpayee’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, has threatened to ignore a supreme court ruling that forbids any group from entering the site to begin construction until the question of ownership has been legally resolved.
Rightwing groups think the site is the birthplace of Lord Ram, an important god in the Hindu pantheon. The destruction of the Babri Masjid in December 1992 triggered some of India’s bloodiest communal rioting since the country was partitioned in 1947.
“The new campaign to build a temple in Ayodhya is a very calculated political decision to raise communal tensions ahead of the next national election in 2004,” said Gautam Navlakha, an anti-communal activist.
Political analysts say that the VHP’s campaign to start construction of the temple has been encouraged by the dramatic election victory of the BJP in the state of Gujarat last December. The BJP’s landslide win followed widespread anti-Muslim rioting last year in Gujarat that was triggered by the massacre of 58 Hindu train passengers by a Muslim mob.
Many of the passengers were VHP activists returning from an earlier agitation in Ayodhya to build a Ram temple. Up to 2,000 Muslims were killed in the riots.
“The Gujarat election victory has given Hindus the confidence to agitate for their rights,” said Tarun Vijay, editor of Panchjanya, a Hindu nationalist newspaper. “This includes a final push to build a temple on the site in Ayodhya.” But there is widespread scepticism that the Kanchi Shankaracharya, who has close connections with the VHP, would be accepted as a neutral mediator by Muslim groups.
“The Shankaracharya has ambitions to become a kind of Hindu pope,” said Ravi Nair, a human rights campaigner. “In order for his ambitions to be accepted he has to deliver a Ram temple.” There is also criticism of Mr Vajpayee for failing to quash the VHP’s demands by pointing out that the dispute is still under legal deliberation. Mr Vajpayee faces important assembly elections in November in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, New Delhi and Chattisgarh.
“The BJP and the VHP are playing ‘good cop, bad cop’,” said Mr Nair. “It is in the government’s interests to appear to want to resolve the dispute calmly. But the poll in Gujarat shows that the BJP derives electoral benefits from heightened communal tension.”
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