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- <text id=89TT3057>
- <title>
- Nov. 20, 1989: World Notes:India
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Nov. 20, 1989 Freedom!
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 53
- World Notes
- INDIA
- Battle of the Bricks
- </hdr><body>
- <p> With India's voters set to go to the polls next week, the
- country's attention was focused less on politics than on a
- religious dispute over the future of a 16th century mosque in
- the North Indian town of Ayodhya. Militant Hindu groups claim
- that India's Mogul conquerors built the mosque after destroying
- a temple marking the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama. The
- militants demand that a temple to Rama be built on the spot.
- India's Muslim minority fiercely objects to the plan. As tension
- has mounted in recent weeks, at least 400 people, most of them
- Muslims, have been killed in communal rioting.
- </p>
- <p> With Hindus accounting for 83% of India's 833 million
- people, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi permitted the militants to
- lay the foundation stone for the new temple last week. The Hindu
- extremists are the vanguard of a growing movement led by the
- Bharatiya Janata Party. Its aim: to establish a Hindu Rashtra
- -- Hindu Nation.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-