ABSTRACT
It is now nearly ten years since the Babri Masjid [mosque] was destroyed in Ayodhya. Many arrests were made after its demolition, but no one has been convicted for the vandalism. No Hindu temple has appeared where the mosque stood for 450 years, nor has the promise made by the government in December 1992 to rebuild the mosque been fulfilled. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the political organization which mobilized people from the late 1980s onwards for the construction of a Hindu temple at the site of the Babri Masjid, now heads a multiparty government in India. Construction of the temple is not on the agenda of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government. Political analysts feel this is because the party realizes that it was being viewed as a single-issue party and that to come to power it had for the present to set aside the temple demand. The new strategy finally paid off first in March 1998 and then in September 1999 when, in alliance with a number of other smaller parties, a BJP-led government assumed office in New Delhi.
