Violence erupts at disputed religious site
Police today fired tear gas and rubber bullets at Hindu militants attempting to hold a banned gathering in Ayodhya, the Indian city at the heart of a decade of religious violence in the country.
The fighting, which included mob members striking out with metal rods, lasted for a half hour, then police took away the Hindu nationalists in buses, estimating that more than 600 were arrested.
One Hindu mendicant, called a sadhu, stood near the area addressing the gathering. "Now is the time for all Hindus to stand up together," he said. "Every Hindu should make a bomb in his home."
The angry crowd was part of a movement that demands the right to build a temple to the chief Hindu god, Rama, at the site of the 16th century Babri Mosque that was torn down by a similar mob in 1992.
"You see this is what they do in the name of God," said VK Agarwal, deputy inspector-general of police in Faizabad, the nearest large town to Ayodhya.
Ayodhya, 300 miles east of New Delhi, has become a religious flashpoint since the destruction of the mosque triggered a year of Hindu-Muslim violence that killed 2,000 people across India.
Hindu hardliners believe Muslims built the mosque on the site of an earlier Hindu temple honouring Rama. Muslims say there is no proof and oppose Hindu plans to build a temple there.
The clash with police occurred near a residential area called Karsavekpuram "volunteers' village". There, Hindu artisans gather from across the country to lend their stone-carving and brick-making skills to the effort to prepare the structure for the temple they intend to build at the disputed site.
There was no trouble this morning near the actual disputed site, a closely guarded hillock surrounded by wire fences protecting a small Rama idol under a tent.
Most of Ayodhya was quiet, which is normal. Religious tolerance is so ingrained in this crowded city - where 200,000 people live among 6,000 temples - that Muslims sometimes shower flower petals on Hindus as they march through town with their idols.
Its Hindus and Muslims attend each others' schools, go to each others' weddings and even help celebrate each others' religious holidays.
"Right up until today, we don't see someone as a Hindu or a Muslim," said Mohammed Idris, a member of the city's small Muslim minority, who runs a school where 75% of the students are Hindu. "We don't fight with each other here."
Many of Ayodhya's residents believe the rally's organisers are seeking political influence. The Hindu nationalist coalition that rules India came to power in the aftermath of the mosque's destruction.
"These people are out to destroy the concept of India," said Gyan Das, a Hindu priest at Ayodhya's temple to the monkey god Hanuman. "If we carve out a nation for the Muslims, and one for the Sikhs, and one for the Christians, then what is left of India?"
Mr Das pledged his support, and the support of more than 400 other priests at the temple, to defend Ayodhya's estimated 7,000 Muslims.
The government of Uttar Pradesh state, where Ayodhya is located, deployed 7,000 police and paramilitary troops, and arrested 17,000 people during the past week to stop the gatherings.
They were enforcing a court order to maintain peace in the town and prevent religious activity at the disputed site until a long legal fight over the property is resolved.
Leaders of the World Hindu Council, who have acknowledged that their members tore down the mosque, had issued barely disguised threats of violence if they were not allowed to hold a religious ceremony at the site.
"The Rama disciples have come here peacefully," Ashok Singhal, a World Hindu Council leader, told reporters in Ayodhya shortly after his arrest. "As soon as they arrive, if they are hit with sticks and treated without mercy, then demonstrations should be held all over the country against those responsible for the ruthlessness."