HINDUS at the centre of a religious dispute that has resulted in 580 deaths have refused to call off their campaign to build a temple over the ruins of a razed mosque.
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) told other Hindu organisations and spiritual leaders that the temple construction programme would begin in the town of Ayodhya as scheduled on March 15. VHP president Ashok Singhal vowed that building work would begin "within 100 days".
The decision places Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in a politically dangerous position. His Hindu nationalist BJP party had urged the VHP to postpone to prevent further unrest, which was triggered by a Muslim massacre of passengers on a train bringing Hindu activists back from Ayodhya.
Leaders of the right-wing Hindu organisation, the RSS, which has close links with the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party were at today's meeting. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpyee has asked the RSS to broker a compromise that would allow the VHP to change its plans without any party losing face.
The December 1992 razing of the mosque in Ayodhya triggered post-independence India's worst Hindu-Muslim violence in which 2,000 were killed.
The Indian press was reflecting this morning that the violence has raised fundamental questions of national and political unity. The Indian Express said in a leader: "Last week was one of the most brutal that this nation has ever had the misfortune of experiencing, one in which India failed to protect its greatest asset - its integral unity based on communal harmony."