Violent protests across India after attack on holy site

Randeep Ramesh, South Asia correspondent
Thursday July 7, 2005
The Guardian

Hundreds of rightwing Hindu protesters stormed an airport in central India yesterday, preventing a flight from taking off in one of a series of violent protests across the country against an attack on a holy site sacred to both Hindus and Muslims.

In Indore, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, activists of the World Hindu Council broke past security officers to storm the domestic airport. The protesters sprawled on the runway, blocking a New Delhi-bound flight for about an hour. Police eventually beat them back and arrested 40 people.

In other state capitals police fired teargas to disperse demonstrators. Security forces in New Delhi used water cannon to prevent hundreds of Hindu nationalists - led by the opposition Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) leader Lal Krishna Advani - from approaching the parliament building.

The violence came after Hindu nationalists blamed Muslim militants for attempting to blow up a temporary temple erected in Ayodhya in northern India over the spot of a demolished 16th-century mosque, the Babri Masjid. Hindus claim the warrior god Ram was born on the site. Six gunmen, who gained entry to the temple complex by blowing up a jeep, were killed during a two-hour shootout with police.

Political analysts said the attack had ended recent moves by the BJP to shed the party's aggressively Hindu identity. "The BJP has lost its autonomy in this regard and the hardliners have tightened their grip," said AG Noorani, a columnist with Frontline magazine.

The BJP rose to prominence after the Babri mosque was reduced to rubble 14 years ago. The appeal court announced yesterday that Mr Advani could be tried for his role in leading the mob to tear down the mosque.

Mr Advani, who oversaw the rise of Hindu nationalism in India, was present when thousands of Hindus descended on Ayodha in December 1992. More than 3,000 people were killed in the ensuing riots, most of them Muslims.

Since then Ayodhya has been inextricably linked with the rise of Hindu extremism. Many activists said yesterday that the Congress-led government was increasingly indifferent to Hindu "values and symbols".

"They have reduced subsidies for our pilgrimages and told soldiers not to wear Hindu marks on their forehead. These are attacks on Hindus, nothing less" said Tarun Vijay, editor of Panchjanya, the house organ of the Hindu right.

Although no group claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attack, Hindu nationalists blamed Islamic militants who they said were supported by Pakistan, which is engaged in peace talks with India. After the attack Indian ministers stressed that the peace process was still on track.

But the Indian media, quoting security sources, have blamed an Islamist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which has mainly concentrated on a guerrilla war against Indian forces in Kashmir. The LeT has been blamed for having a hand in attacks on India's parliament in December 2001 and on Akshardham temple in Gujarat in 2002.

Indian intelligence has pointed out that the disputed Ayodhya site is a prime target for rebels fighting in Kashmir. The city was put under a security blanket in 2002 after reports of a possible attack. The largest militant group in Kashmir, Hizbul Mujahedin, denied any role in Tuesday's assault.

Centuries of tension
Sanjay Jha

Tensions date back to 1528 when the Babri mosque was built by the Mughal emperor Babur on the site where some Hindus say their revered deity Lord Ram was born.

In the 1980s, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) rekindled the campaign to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya. In 1991 the BJP came to power in Uttar Pradesh state. The next year the mosque was torn down by Hindus, prompting rioting in which thousands died.

In 2002 a crowd of angry Muslims set alight to a train carrying Hindu activists, killing at least 57. More than 2,000 died in the ensuing violence.

Thousands Are Arrested in India in Unrest Over Temple Site

NEW DELHI, July 6 - The police on Wednesday fired tear gas at hundreds of demonstrators in the center of this city, the Indian capital, who were protesting an attack on a disputed religious site that has emerged as India's most potent symbol of sectarian strife.

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Scott Eells for The New York Times

Indian protesters clashed with police in New Delhi on Wednesday.

A day after the attack on the site, the temple compound in the northern town of Ayodhya, protesters led by the opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, and their allied organizations, also stormed the airport and hurled potted plants in Indore, a central Indian city, and smashed car windows in Ranchi, in eastern Jharkhand State.

In the capital, the political protest led by the opposition party chief, Lal Krishna Advani, resulted in the arrests of more than 2,800 people. The local police said that 76 were arrested in Indore and 115 in Ranchi. Strikes have been called by Hindu political groups for Thursday.

The demonstrations were peaceful and small, though, in comparison with the Hindu-Muslim violence that has previously broken out in this country. In the attack on Tuesday, gunmen brazenly laid siege to the heavily fortified Ayodhya temple compound.

In December 1992, led by the rallying cry that it was the birthplace of a Hindu deity called Ram, a Hindu mob demolished a 16th-century mosque that had stood there. Mr. Advani was present at the time. In the riots that followed, thousands were killed.

What kind of traction Mr. Advani will get from renewing the Ram temple call remains to be seen. Also on Wednesday, a court in Lucknow, near Ayodhya, charged Mr. Advani and several other leaders of his party with inciting the mob that demolished the mosque in 1992. A lower court had thrown out that charge in September 2003, when Mr. Advani was home minister in the government led by the party. Mr. Advani has denied any wrongdoing.

Since the events of 1992, the Ayodhya temple movement has been a powerful political plank for the Hindu nationalists, buoying the party to political power in 1999 but also forcing it to sideline the temple campaign in the five years that it was the leading party in a coalition government. On Wednesday, Mr. Advani renewed the call to erect a Hindu temple on the site. The Ram temple issue "has again come alive after yesterday's militant attack in Ayodhya," Mr. Advani told the demonstrators. "The Ram temple will be built right there."

The police killed six suspected assailants in Tuesday's attack. They have not yet said anything about who might have been responsible. Some government officials suggested that it may have been an effort to derail peace efforts with Pakistan.

In Ayodhya, meanwhile, many shops near the site were shuttered, and several shopkeepers vented anger against the attack and the politicians who have tried to capitalize on it.

"The B.J.P. didn't do anything when they were in power," said Om Prakash Gupta, a teashop owner. "They only remember Lord Ram when they are out of power."

Hari Kumar contributed reporting from Ayodhya for this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/07/international/asia/07india.html

Hindu nationalists storm airport over militant attack

AYODHYA, India -- Hindu nationalists stormed an airport in central India and briefly shut it down Wednesday in nationwide protests over an attack they blamed on Muslim militants a day earlier at a northern Indian shrine that forms the heart of a decades-old sectarian conflict.

More than 200 slogan-shouting activists of the World Hindu Council broke past security officers to storm the domestic airport at Indore in Madhya Pradesh state, local administrator Vivek Agarwal said.

Activists smashed a VIP lounge and sprawled onto the tarmac, blocking a New Delhi-bound flight for about an hour. Police beat them back with bamboo truncheons and arrested 40 people. Airport operations later resumed, Agarwal said.

Tuesday's attack left the six assailants dead and wounded three security guards at a makeshift Hindu shrine at a site in the northern town of Ayodhya considered holy by both Hindus and Muslims.

One attacker blew himself up in a jeep, tearing a hole in iron railings encircling the complex and allowing the five other attackers to enter the complex where they died in a gunfight with guards, police said.

Hindu nationalists blamed the attack on Pakistan-backed Muslim militants and called for nationwide protests while officials tightened security to deter protesters from clashing with Muslims, who are about 12 percent of the 1 billion-plus population.

In New Delhi, police used tear gas and water cannons Wednesday to disperse hundreds of Hindu nationalists led by opposition Bharatiya Janata Party leader Lal Krishna Advani and who shouted anti-government slogans near the Parliament building. No one was hurt.

The militants in Tuesday's attack had not yet been identified, and no one claimed responsibility. Indian intelligence officials said their methods were similar to those used by Pakistan-based militants who have fought Indian forces since 1989 in Kashmir.

Hindu nationalists said the attack showed that India's recent peace process with rival Pakistan has been fruitless.

"This is an attack on Hindu pride, and we shall not tolerate it," prominent religious leader Nritya Gopal Das said.

Pakistan's government condemned the attack, and India's Home Minister Shivraj Patil said it should not affect the continuing talks between the nuclear-armed states.

"There are only a handful of people who believe in terrorism. The majority believes in peace. We will not allow the intentions of the few people to succeed," Patil said.

State Gov.T. V. Rajeshwar told reporters at the temple site Wednesday that intelligence agencies had warned of a terrorist attack at a religious place but had no specific warning about the Ayodhya temple.

Police and paramilitary forces patrolled Ayodhya, largely deserted because shops and businesses were closed in a strike called by Hindu nationalists who drove around the city in small groups.

Damage to outer railings at the shrine's 80-acre (30-hectare) complex was repaired overnight, and saffron-robed Hindu hermits silently walked past the site of the gunbattle. A few people went inside to offer prayers, chief priest Acharya Satendra Das said.

The makeshift shrine was built by thousands of Hindu nationalists who swarmed the area on Dec. 6, 1992, pulling down a 16th century mosque with crowbars, spades and bare hands. Hindu-Muslim riots that followed killed some 2,000 people across India.

Hindu nationalists say Muslims built the mosque after desecrating an even-older Hindu temple on what is regarded as the birthplace of Hindu god Rama. Muslims reject this, and both sides are in a long-drawn court battle over who owns the land.

The violence was the first major attack on a Hindu temple site since the 2002 assault on the Akshardham temple in western Gujarat state, which left 32 people dead. That attack was blamed Muslim militants. (AP)

July 6, 2005

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