AYODHYA, India, 15 March — A major showdown loomed as frightened Muslims continued to desert this north Indian town yesterday after militant Hindus vowed to stage a religious ceremony today in defiance of a Supreme Court ban and government warnings.
A meeting here of Hindu leaders of the militant Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) decided to go ahead with the banned ceremony. The extremists said they would march toward the site of a 16th century mosque razed by Hindu zealots in 1992, carrying pre-carved stones for a temple they plan to build to the Hindu warrior deity Ram.
“We will all go,” said VHP national secretary Rajendra Singh Pankaj. “No power on Earth can stop us. If they prevent us, we will all get arrested and then launch an agitation never seen in history.”
The defiant stand came just hours after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee pledged to uphold a Supreme Court ruling that “no religious activities of any nature, by anyone” could be held in or around the razed mosque site.
“I wish to categorically and unequivocally state that the government will implement the court order in letter and in spirit,” Vajpayee told parliament.
As almost all of Ayodhya’s 4000 Muslims have left their homes for safety a few Muslim leaders like Muhammad Hashim Ansari have decided to stay back. Ansari, one of the litigants fighting a court battle to stake claim to the disputed Babri Mosque right from 1949, is unhappy with the security arrangement.
Like most Muslims, Ansari does not have faith in predominantly Hindu Provincial Armed Constabulary, which has often been accused of harboring a communal bias. “If the administration had deployed only the Central Reserve Police Force in Ayodhya’s 20 Muslim localities, then they would have had nothing to fear; but the deployment of the Uttar Pradesh police, particularly the PAC, has led most of the families to desert Ayodhya,” Ansari said.
The Ayodhya administration, or local government, tried to thrash out a last-minute compromise with the Hindu hard-liners.
“As long as the Supreme Court orders are not violated we can take anything from anywhere. There is no ban on a temple stone being taken out of the workshop,” said Anil Kumar Gupta, the commissioner of Ayodhya. “One has to judge the motive. If they want to take all the stones out from the workshop to construct a temple then obviously that will be not allowed. But if they want to gift a stone, to me there is no problem.”
Today’s ceremony will be led by Ramchandra Paramhans, an aging Hindu ascetic who has threatened to commit suicide if the security forces intervene. “In the name of Ram, for Ram and against this government, I will kill myself,” said Paramhans, who is viewed as the chief architect of the temple construction campaign.
