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| India-Pakistan |
| Ayodhya explosion fizzles |
| 2002-03-15 |
That's the surprise of the week. I am so confused... The hard-liners, wearing white and saffron robes and chanting Sanskrit hymns, held the ceremony outside disputed land surrounding a mosque destroyed by Hindu zealots in 1992, backing down from a threat to defy a court ruling and invade the area. So they actually stayed outside the area, just going up to the fence and looking over? Police rounded up thousands of people across India ahead of the ritual to prevent a fresh outbreak of religious violence after more than 700 people, mostly Muslims, died in unrest which erupted in western India on February 27. Did they actually manage to put out the firebrands? Doubt it. This kind of round-up usually ends up with the arrestees representing a delicate balance of loud mouth and low IQ, plus anybody packing heat. But the day was quiet, barring some unrest in the western city of Ahmedabad, which bore the brunt of the recent unrest. Police and the army were called in to quell Hindu-Muslim violence and curfew was imposed in some areas. But Ahmedabad wasn't directly a part of this deal. It's last week's riots, nothing but a reminder of what could come... The religious unrest has plunged Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee into his biggest crisis since taking office, and coincided with a massive military stand-off with Pakistan. Yeah. The whole episode has looked like an attack on him, to make him look as ineffectual as Musharraf. So why didn't they go in for the kill now? Or do they value him more weakened than broken? Or what was the payoff from BJP to VHP? The fundamentalists, who believe the 16th-century Babri mosque was built by Muslim Moghul invaders, marched through the narrow, winding streets of Ayodhya in northern India, vastly outnumbered by riot police and paramilitary troops rushed in to stop them from storming the disputed land. Suppose it could have been the army that saved the day, but it's not likely. This was supposed to result in dead bodies to point to in return for... What? India's Supreme Court on Wednesday barred all religious ceremonies on the land until an eventual court ruling on whether it should go to Hindus or Muslims. The temple campaign's leader Ramchandra Das Paramhans, a 93-year-old firebrand with a flowing gray board, had said on Thursday he was ready to die rather than give up his plans to pray on the land surrounding the mosque. But under intense pressure from Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which hails from the same array of Hindu nationalist groups as the Ayodhya hard-liners, he backed down. Well, none of us really wants to catch lead... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |