INDIA: The Indian Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, faces the dilemma every political leader dreads. He has to confront rebellious elements in his own Hindu nationalist "family" to prevent his 24 coalition partners deserting him.
Facing the worst political crisis of his four-year rule, Mr Vajpayee must confront the VHP or World Hindu Council, largely responsible for bringing his Bharatiya Janata Party into office.
The 38-year old council that is committed to imposing Hindu hegemony has plunged the country into a spiral of Hindu-Muslim violence that has claimed over 500 lives in western Gujarat state over the past week.
The council was hoping that Mr Vajpayee's government would assist it in building a temple to the Hindu god Ram on the site of a mosque at Ayodhya, 345 miles east of New Delhi.
Council activists and their allies demolished the 16th-century Babri mosque in 1992, an event that was followed by the worst sectarian riots in India since independence in 1947. Over 2,000 people died in nationwide rioting that lasted several weeks. The council has now declared it will start building the controversial temple on March 15th in defiance of court orders.
The compulsions of coalition politics, however, and the realisation that communal policies do not yield political results, has led Mr Vajpayee to opt for a judicial resolution to the dispute.
The Ayodhya question has been pending in various courts for over half a century and the council had hoped that a BJP administration would short-circuit the process with a political decision.
A key ally from southern India with nine MPs yesterday threatened to quit the federal coalition if the government allowed the temple's construction.
"The relationship between the church and the state that proved politically advantageous to the BJP has now become a cross that the party does not want to bear," an election analyst, Mr Dorab Sopariwala, said. The affiliation now appears to be crumbling, he added. The BJP was voted out of office last month in India's politically vital state of Uttar Pradesh where Ayodhya is located.
The home minister, Mr Lal Krishna Advani, considered the prime minister-in-waiting, is also hoist on his own petard.
As an MP, determined to bring the BJP to power, Mr Advani traversed India in the early 1990s in a Toyota van made up as Ram's chariot to garner Hindu support for the Ayodhya temple. He also appealed to voters to elect his party to restore Hindu pride.
Mr Advani was also present at Ayodhya when the mosque was brought down by hundreds of Hindu zealots, though in several depositions before the continuing judicial inquiry into the demolition, he denies any involvement.
