Wednesday June 26, 3:36 PM
Hindu priests, Muslim leaders demand ban on hardline group



A group of Hindu priests and Muslim leaders demanded a ban on a hardline Hindu group that has been spearheading a campaign to build a temple over the ruins of a razed mosque in their town.

Hindu seer Gyan Das accused leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, World Hindu Council) of trying to create distrust between the Hindu and Muslim communities in India with its temple construction campaign.

"We do not want the VHP to meddle in the temple issue; we want a ban on them," Das told AFP after the meeting of Hindu and Muslim leaders on Tuesday.

"We will solve this problem ourselves, we do not want the VHP in the middle," he said.

The VHP and other Hindu hardliners want to build a temple on the ruins of the 16th-century Babri mosque in Ayodhya, which was demolished by Hindu zealots in December 1992.

The demolition sparked violent communal riots in which more than 2,000 people were killed.

Hindus claim the Babri mosque was built over the birthplace of their god Ram.

The dispute over the site of the ruined mosque is now in the hands of the courts.

Hindu groups had set a March 12 deadline for the federal government, which controls the land around the razed mosque, to clear obstacles for the construction of the temple.

After intense lobbying by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, the activists agreed to a scaled-down ceremony on March 15.

The VHP this month held another ceremony as a precursor to the temple's construction.

VHP general secretary Praveen Togadia said Saturday the group would launch an all-India campaign to gather support for the temple's construction.

Das' comments came as a leading Hindu religious figure, Kanchi Sankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati, arrived in the capital New Delhi to broker peace between Hindus and Muslims.

But VHP leaders have vowed not to wait for any new decision, with its president Ashok Singhal saying Tuesday that the group was "not ready to accept the government's suggestion of maintaining status quo" on the disputed land.