AYODHYA, INDIA: When Hindu fundamentalists swept to unprecedented success in violent national elections last spring, promising to make India an idyllic reflection of the kingdom of Ram, this squalid temple own in northern India was where it all was supposed to begin.

Here, radical Hindu leaders promised to avenge centuries of supposed Hindu humiliation at the hands of Muslim conquerors by erecting a temple to Ramon the site of a mosque, the Babri Masjid, which was erected by Babar, a 16th century Mughal king, For two years before this year’s election, the disputed mosque was the prime symbol of the Hindu revivalist campaign, sparking bloody religious riots that claimed nearly 2,000 lives around the country.

But six months after emotional voters rewarded Hindu leaders with control of India’s most important state government that of Uttar Pradesh, where Ayodhya is located Babars mosque and surrounded and protected by squads of armed police sent by the Hindu led state government to protect the mosque from its own rabid Hindu followers.

The police guards have transformed the Ayodhya mosque into symbol far different from what Hindu revivalist leaders intended. Rather than the first triumph of a religious nationalist movement, Babar’s three domed mosque has become a sign of paralysis and division within the Hindu movement.

The emerging fissure in the movement pits Hindu politicians who want to hold and consolidate their recent political gains against radical religious activists who argue that the purpose of the Hindu movements is to alter the character of Indian society not to reap the spoils of holding public office.

The immediate issue is how fast and on what terms to build the temple. The leaders of the main Hindu revivalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has governed Uttar Pradesh since the election, have pledged to follow strictly legal and constitutional means. That has slowed their construction plans considerably, as opponents of the temple have tied up the land around Babars mosque innumerous lawsuits Radical Hindu activists are urging the Uttar Pradesh government to disregard the law and build the temple anyway and quickly.

These younger Hindu activists see the B.J.P’s senior politicians as old men who only take action after a lot of talk”, said Om Prakash Pandey, a 27-yr-old mustachioed volunteer, with the radical Bajrang Dal Party, a political ally of the B.I.P. Pandey walks with a crutch after being shot last year while climbing atop the Babri Masjid and attempting to pound a hole in one of its domes with a hammer.

We are disillusioned because we feel we have given them enough time”, Pander said, referring to the six months the B.I.P has been in control of the Uttar Pradesh government. So {impatient was Pandey that a day earlier he stormed the police barricade around the mosque and climbed it a second time with a hammer, only to be dragged down and beaten by police sent by the very Hindu leaders he had helped to elect. He said he would leave Ayodhya soon to form “a suicide squad” that would return and destroy the mosque once and for all.

Such fighting words unnerve BJP ministers in the state capital, Luck now. Though they had pledged to make Pandey’s dream come true while campaigning, they are enjoying the fruits of public office free ears, patronage, houses for the first time in their lives, after decades of labor as obscure religious radicals in India’s political wilderness.

They have decided to use force to protect the mosque they vowed to replace, partly because they fear that if they do not New Delhi’s secular Congress Party led national government will tow them out of the state govt and impose federal emergency rule.

 The emerging spit in the Hindu movement has many potentially serious implications, as it may force the revivalists at Present the second largest political force in India to choose. Between street agitation and democratic means while pursuing their goal of reviving Hindu pride and ending legal Protections for the s 120 million Muslim minority.

For the moment, the split in the Hindu revivalist movement has had the effect of blunting the political effectiveness of the BUP, providing India with a respite from national religious confrontation at a time when the country is struggling for reform its inflation wracked, debt bound economy.

While the government in New Delhi wrestles with India’s formidable economic problems, the BJP is preoccupied with the task of effectively governing the state of utter Pradesh, which has more than 100 million impoverished residents and a bankrupt state treasury. In doing so, the BJP cannot assuage doubters who argue that Hindu leaders are much better at changing prayers than at running an administration.

Article extracted from this publication >> November 29, 1991