NEW DELHI, Mar 12: India held its breath today ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on a seemingly intractable religious dispute that goes to the very core of India's commitment to its secular constitution, reports AFP.
The highest court in the land will Wednesday hear a petition seeking a ban on plans by hardline Hindus to hold a special ground-breaking ceremony on Friday for a temple they wish to build in the northern town of Ayodhya.
The Hindus want to hold the ceremony on government land adjacent to the disputed site of a 16th century mosque that was torn down by Hindu zealots nearly 10 years ago.
A week of intense negotiations involving leaders of the Hindu and Muslim communities as well as Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and top cabinet ministers has made little headway in resolving the dispute.
A "compromise" formula put forward by the militant Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP - World Hindu Council), which is spearheading the temple construction drive in Ayodhya, was rejected by Muslim leaders. Since then the VHP and other right-wing Hindu groups have sent mixed signals as to how they might respond should Wednesday's Supreme Court ruling go against them.
Some insist that the judiciary has no say in religious matters and Friday's ground-breaking ceremony will go ahead come what may, while others have agreed to abide by the court's decision.
"If prevented, we will court arrest. Our programme will be extremely peaceful," VHP president Ashok Singhal told reporters in Ayodhya on Tuesday.
The looming showdown comes as India is still reeling from its worst outbreak of Hindu-Muslim sectarian violence in nearly a decade that claimed close to 700 lives in the western state of Gujarat. The unrest was triggered on February 27 by a Muslim attack on a train carrying Hindu activists back from Ayodhya. The religious dispute has posed a major challenge to Vajpayee and his ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party, which has been criticised by opposition parties and some allies within the coalition government of failing to take direct action to defuse the situation.
But the options open to the government are limited as it struggles to apply the tenets of India's secular constitution to a deeply emotive sectarian issue.
The two sides fighting for control of the temple-mosque site in Ayodhya are so firmly entrenched that any attempt by the government to impose a solution runs the risk of triggering a communal backlash.
Vajpayee said Monday that the government would prevent "any activity" in Ayodhya prior to the Supreme Court judgement.
But some critics say the prime minister is simply passing the buck.
"By putting it all on the court, the political leadership is not just failing to discharge its own responsibility, it is also being unfair to the judiciary," the Indian Express newspaper said in an editorial.
"The court is unjustly burdened with a matter that essentially requires political effort for a resolution," the Express said.
There is no guarantee that the Supreme Court will even accept the petition. In the past, it has refused to rule on matters it deems to lie outside its jurisdiction.
Should the matter be placed back in the lap of the government, Vajpayee will be left facing some stark choices.
The leaders of more secular-minded parties within his coalition said Monday that the government would have no choice but to "uphold the status quo" in Ayodhya, which would mean a confrontation with hardline Hindus intent on converging on the disputed site on Friday.
The BJP's authority as the dominant party in the coalition has already been undermined by a disastrous showing in state elections last month, and the Ayodhya row has only served to further weaken its position.
The stakes could hardly be higher. Some 2,000 people were killed in communal riots that followed the destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya in 1992.