Brother vs. Brother.(Hindu-Muslim relations and political unrest in India)(Brief Article)

The scenes from the Indian state of Gujarat last week seemed a decade old. The torching of a trainload of Hindu activists killed 58 passengers and sparked a bloody cycle of retribution. The last time Hindus and Muslims had attacked each other with such ferocity was in 1992, inflamed by the movement to erect a temple on the site of a razed mosque in the northern Indian town of Ajodhya. Then, led by Hindu nationalist L. K. Advani, zealots tore down the Babri Mosque with their bare hands, prompting nationwide riots that killed more than 2,000 people. In four days of rioting last week, more than 400 died.

Perhaps it's fitting that as Home minister, Advani is now responsible for quelling the violence: his governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) truly does face a crisis of its own making. Its allies in the Hindu-nationalist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) are the ones leading the charge to build a temple to the god Ram in Ajodhya, his supposed birthplace. The BJP itself has shied away from the issue since first taking power in 1998. But desperate to win recent elections in the populous state of Uttar Pradesh, where Ajodhya is located, the party campaigned on a fire-breathing nationalist platform centered on the government's tough stand against Muslim Pakistan. The VHP simultaneously rallied its followers by whipping up the temple issue.

The strategy failed: the BJP was trounced in the elections, and the VHP has been emboldened by a feeling that the ruling party, which leads a fragile coalition in New Delhi, now cannot afford to alienate its hard- core supporters. Activists have set a deadline of March 15 for construction to begin. "The government's in a trap," says Zoya Hassan, a political-science professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. "On the one hand, its religious supporters are holding a sword over its head, while there's a considerable volume of sensible public opinion that wants them to stop this."

The violence, which continued in Gujarati ...