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Attempting to balance allegiance to his party (which is closely allied with the VHP) and the support of a diverse multiparty coalition government, the prime minister has declared he will not allow unauthorized construction on the site. However, The Christian Science Monitor reports that as recently as December 2000 the prime minister said, "The construction of the Ram temple is an expression of national sentiment that remains unrealized."

The matter is currently in India's Supreme Court, but the VHP vowed to ignore any court action and to build its Hindu temple beginning March 15, legally or not. An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Hindu activists are on the scene in anticipation of the construction.

The BBC reported yesterday that the VHP reached a compromise with Vajpayee and pledged to push its March 15 deadline back three months to let tensions cool. The group has allegedly also agreed to abide any decision the courts make. However, the compromise comes with a series of conditions. If denied access to build on the site of the razed Mosque, the VHP wants to build its Ayodhya temple on adjacent ground.

However, The Chicago Tribune reports today that little progress has been made and government talks with the VHP are still in deadlock.

The New York Times said the temple issue is a "moment of reckoning" for the BJP. Many observers are waiting to see what steps the prime minister and the government will take in future weeks.

Yesterday, the AICC called for a crackdown on extremist Hindu groups in the country, claiming that government inaction was responsible for the massacre. While the BJP Indian government has banned one Islamic organization's operations, the AICC said, it has ignored Hindu militants "despite overwhelming evidence of complicity in violence against Christians and Muslims."

Gujarat police also claim party members incited last week's riots. Others claim the police themselves took part in the slaughter.

Bloody Gujarat
Like Ayodhya, Gujarat has a history of violence and murderous rioting. The state was the home of Mohandas Gandhi, who tried to reconcile the violent tensions between Hindus and the minority Muslims that led to nearly 1 million deaths in 1947. More deaths followed in riots in 1969.

After the 1992 fall of the Babri Masjid mosque, most of the worst violence occurred in Gujarat. Ten days later, a new round of violence between Hindus and Muslims broke out in the state and left ten dead.

Smaller riots occurred in Gujarat in 1986, 1993, 1999, and 2001. Twice in 1999, attacks were targeted in the state against Christians and their property.

Most past violence (including the 1999 murder of missionary Graham Staines) and persecution against Christians in India has occurred in the state of Orissa, located on the coast opposite Gujarat (see map).

Last week's death toll is a return to the massacres of the past in Gujarat, a time that many Indians hoped was over. A social worker told The Irish Times that during last year's earthquake, Hindus and Muslims were working side by side and many took it as a sign that "communal animosity had been left behind."

A Muslim woman told the paper that she too thought Gujarat's religious conflicts were past and now had strong relationships with Hindu neighbors. "We were betrayed by the very people whom we looked upon as members of our extended family," she said. " I saw my neighbor set my mother alight after dousing her with kerosene."

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March (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46