India braced for a court ruling Thursday on Babri Mosque dispute over a holy site that will test the secular country's often tense religious.

India braces for Babri Mosque verdict
by Sharat Pradhan Sharat Pradhan – 1 hr 32 mins ago

LUCKNOW, India (AFP) – India braced for a court ruling Thursday on a bitter Hindu-Muslim dispute over a holy site that will test the secular country's often tense religious relations.

Thousands of paramilitary police have been deployed around the north Indian town of Ayodhya -- home to the 16th century Babri mosque, which was razed by Hindu extremists in 1992, and is claimed by both religious groups.

The High Court in Lucknow, the state capital of Uttar Pradesh, will rule on who owns the site in a judgment that poses a serious headache for the government as it gears up to host the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi from Sunday.

The destruction of the mosque sparked some of the worst communal violence in India since the partition of the subcontinent in 1947, leaving 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, dead.



The government has issued public appeals for calm ahead of the verdict, as well as placing advertisements in newspapers urging respect for the rule of law and mobilising tens of thousands of security forces.

India is home to all the world's major religions that co-exist for the most part in harmony, forming an essential part of the nation's image as a fast-modernising multi-racial society capable of coping with its diversity.

India and neighbouring Pakistan were both born in strife, however, after their creation via the partition of the then British-ruled subcontinent in 1947 led to religious clashes that left up to a million people dead.

The country has avoided any major outbreak of Hindu-Muslim violence since riots in the western state of Gujarat in 2002 and Home Minister P. Chidambaram expressed his belief Wednesday that the country had changed.



"India has moved on. Young people have moved on," he told a press conference, issuing another appeal for calm.

This will be put to the test when the High Court rules from about 1000 GMT, with one of the main consequences of the Ayodhya dispute being the increased influence of Hindu nationalist groups.

Security has been tightened in Ayodhya and 32 other sensitive locations across the country -- four of them in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state.



Chidambaram said 190,000 security troopers would be on duty across Uttar Pradesh alone.

"We have been instructed to keep a very tight vigil for the coming days and our duty is to ensure that neither of the sides finds any way to vent their frustration," O.P. Tiwari, a senior policeman standing guard at the holy site, told AFP.

Hindus say the Babri mosque was built by the Moghul emperor Babur on the site of a temple marking the birthplace of the Hindu warrior god Ram. Hindus want to build a Ram temple on the site.

The High Court ruling will turn on three key questions: whether the disputed spot was Ram's birthplace, whether the mosque was built after the demolition of a temple and if the mosque had been built in accordance with the tenets of Islam.

Sonia Gandhi, president of the ruling Congress party and the matriarch of Indian politics, said "almost the entire country has expressed its willingness to accept the judgement.

"Unity in diversity and a composite culture is our most precious heritage and legacy," she said.

Any ruling is likely to be challenged in the Supreme Court, so the 60-year dispute is almost certain to rumble on.

All mainstream political parties, including the Hindu nationalist opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have called for calm, though doubts remain about the reaction of fringe religious groups if the ruling goes against them.

"Even if the court allows the Muslims to take the land then it should be their duty to give it back to the Hindus," Prem Shankar Pandey, a Hindu shopkeeper, told AFP in Ayodhya.

V.N. Arora, who heads the department of strategic studies in Ayodhya's Saket College, tried to allay fears of a repeat of the 1992 carnage.

"But there is a possibility that a splinter Muslim group could try and offer prayers at the site if the verdict goes in their favour," Arora told AFP.

Since 1992, the site has been cordoned off and guarded by troops.

"The dispute has been one of the biggest influences in the shaping of independent India," the Economic and Political Weekly wrote in an editorial.

"It appears almost unreal to remember that this is, in legal terms, a mere dispute over the title to a small plot of land in a nondescript historical town of north India."