NEW DELHI, India - Fears of a fresh explosion of Hindu-Muslim violence in India receded on Saturday after a threatened showdown over a disputed holy site in northern India was averted.
"Ayodhya face-off ends in a whimper," read a headline in the Times of India.
Police had rounded up thousands of people across the country ahead of a contentious Hindu prayer ritual on Friday to stop any new unrest after more than 700, mostly Muslims, died in vicious bloodletting that erupted in western India on February 27.
But the ceremony in the ancient holy northern town of Ayodhya went off quietly amid a massive security presence.
Hundreds of Hindu fundamentalists blessed pillars meant for a temple to the god-king Ram on the site of a razed mosque in Ayodhya whose destruction by Hindu fanatics a decade ago triggered riots in which 3,000 people died.
On Saturday, the temple-studded Hindu pilgrimage town was limping back to normal after almost a weeklong shutdown in which it had been virtually sealed off from the outside world.
In Gujarat state where the recent violence occurred, all was quiet on Saturday after three men were killed in Hindu-Muslim clashes as mobs set shops on fire and attacked mosques.
But a new political controversy loomed over a decision by Prime Minister Atal Behari, who leads the Hindu nationalist coalition government, to send an envoy to accept two pillars intended for the elaborate temple from the Hindu activists.
The hard-line Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) said the acceptance of the carved pillars by a government representative implied acceptance of the project. "It's a great achievement," senior VHP official Pravin Togadia told a news conference.
Vajpayee was slammed by the opposition Congress party for sending a government representative to receive the stone pillars.
ACCUSED OF CONNIVING
The government "tacitly connived with the VHP and has now been exposed as openly collaborating with them," Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born leader of Congress, told parliament on Friday.
A government spokesman said the acceptance of the pillars did not mean the government had agreed the temple should be built on the mosque site claimed by both Hindus and Muslims.
"The fact is the pillars were accepted outside the disputed area," he said, adding they would be kept in safe custody until judges decided on the ownership of the land, an issue that has been before the courts for half a century.
The religious unrest has plunged Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition into a deep political crisis with the opposition accusing him of betraying the secular constitution, and coincides with a massive military stand-off with Pakistan.
The fundamentalists believe the 16th-century Babri mosque was built by Muslim Moghul invaders on the site of the birthplace of Lord Ram, one of the greatest deities in the Hindu pantheon.
On Thursday, the temple campaign's leader, Ramchandra Das Paramhans, a 93-year-old firebrand with a tangled gray board, had said he was ready to commit suicide rather than give up his plans to pray on land surrounding the mosque.
But on Friday, under huge pressure from the BJP, which hails from the same Hindu revivalist family as the Ayodhya hard-liners, he retreated from a threat to defy a Supreme Court order and held the ceremony outside land around the mosque.
The BJP shot to prominence on a wave of Hindu revivalism. But it pledged to give up the temple plank in return for backing from secular allies when it took office in 1999. Now Vajpayee is accused of siding with the Hindu hard-liners.
"The chilling reality is that the (Hindu revivalist groups') majoritarian communalist agenda under the BJP's aegis represents a real danger to the integrity of the nation," the Hindu said in an editorial on Saturday.