India: Gunmen killed at Indian holy site(Muslims' attempted score-settling against Hindus)

BBC News ^ | 07/05/05

[TigerLikesRooster]

Last Updated: Tuesday, 5 July, 2005, 09:20 GMT 10:20 UK

Gunmen killed at Indian holy site

 

Police have ended an attack on a disputed religious site in northern India by killing all the assailants.

Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil said five militants had been killed by the security forces, and another unidentified person was also killed.

In 1992, Hindu nationalists demolished a mosque at the site at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh state, sparking riots.

Islamic militants had recently threatened to target the complex, but no group has so far claimed the attack.

State of alert

The unidentified men forced their way into the heavily guarded site at about 0915 local time (0415 GMT).

Click here to see a map of the disputed site

They used a jeep loaded with explosives to blow a hole in the wall of the complex, and drove a car through the gap.

The gunmen were surrounded by armed police as they tried to enter the inner area of the complex, and a gun battle lasting nearly two hours followed.

A local official told the BBC that all the Hindu pilgrims and the religious structure were safe.

The destruction of the Babri mosque sparked nationwide riots

The driver of the men's vehicle has been arrested and is being questioned by police, who say they recovered three AK-47 assault rifles and hand grenades at the site.

Hindu leaders reacted angrily to Tuesday's incident.

India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has called for country-wide protests, accusing the government of going soft on terrorism.

Party chief Lal Krishna Advani said the attack had brought what he termed the movement to build a Hindu temple at the site back to centre-stage.

Hindu nationalist group the Rashtriya Shyamsevak Sangh (RSS) appealed to the public to keep any protests peaceful.

A prominent Islamic scholar urged calm.

"No movement can succeed with violence," Maulana Wahiuddin said.

The town and state are on high alert and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called a cabinet meeting in Delhi to discuss the attack.

Religious bloodshed

The Ayodhya complex is one of the most disputed religious sites in the world, and one of the most heavily guarded places in India.

The complex is claimed by right-wing Hindus, who believe it is the birthplace of their Lord Ram.

The 16th century Babri mosque was destroyed 13 years ago by activists who believed it had been built upon an old Hindu temple.

The move prompted one of India's worst bouts of nationwide religious rioting between Hindus and the country's Muslim minority, which left more than 2,000 people dead.

The bloodshed was viewed as the most serious threat to India's secular identity since independence in 1947.

The dispute over the complex is still working its way through India's courts.

[muawiyah]

What is now Bengla Desh was Islamicized pretty much by ordinary missionary work several centuries AFTER the Moslem invasions in India's West (in the part now called Pakistan).

Vast stretches of Greater India, e.g. most of Indonesia, Malaysia, and so forth, were Islamicized through ordinary missionary work and not marching armies.

You might ask what happened to all the Buddhists who used to live in India (and who did not otherwise live in Sri Lanka or up in the mountains). Hmmmmm~!

No one over there has failed to dip his or her spear in the blood of others.

[sukhoi-30mki]

& you are appalling fair weather patriot who doesn't know where his loyalties lie.

[sukhoi-30mki]

No-extremists are those animals who's ideologies has considers gangrapes & murder of innocent children acceptable to their cause.All Slammics & your dear Sanghies fit the bill to a tee.

[VladimirX]

It's highly unlikely any American missionary would ever use "violence" to convert someone. American Protestant Christians don't do that....

If I remember it correctly, he was an Aussie not an American...

Now, were the "tribals" Hindu, or were they something else? Actually, that's a really, really, really difficult question to answer since so many Hindus seem, to us at least, as if they are filled with superstitition and folk belief to the exclusion of knowledge and coherent religious belief...

Who cares if they are superstitious or not... some Indian folk got pissed off with ONE Aussie missionary guy, this is probably the first crime against a christian in a hundred years probably, considering the fact that Christian British used to rule over Hindus for over a century, and even after they left, christians were never even persecuted.

It doesnt make sense to judge 1.2 billion people by that one crime anyway, esp after that guy who killed the missionary and his sons was caught and executed for what he did.

Its still a much better than what happens in Saud or Pak, your favorite allies, when you preach christianity.. You get tortured and killed. Christians get killed all the time over there and yet, its more easy for people to pick up enmity with Hindus by pointing to isolated instances of violence here and there.. eh ?

All you are gonna do is end up ruining the west, leaving it without any allies in Asia..

They are the Aryans to whom Ram was sent at least 6 times, eh?

You send RAM not just to Aryans but to all human beings as well, in MBs or GBs, as many times as you want if you got the green dough ;) (frankly I couldnt get your take on Aryans there)

[VladimirX]

Extremists come in all shades, they are not just animals. You can be an extremist in moderation too, afterall like the socialists, for instance.

They always count on our inclination to stereotype them as a bunch of savages, so that they can attack us in novel ways, which we dont expect of them.

[muawiyah]

Good grief, man, you have to read the ancient stuff to figure out what the Hindu guy was trying to preach to us. It was all "we have received the wisdom of the ancients, as given to them directly by Shiva's own agent/persona, and you Westerners can never understand anything, and beside you follow those ignorant Arab hillbillies out in the desert when it comes to religion anyway".

It's not like I haven't heard that nonsense before.

Our local library had a complete set of all the Upanishads, translated into English out of the German into which they'd been translated by the Nazis. Seems they had an interest in those "heavenly weapons" that kept popping up in some of the older texts. Anyway, I spent time reading through the entire body of works. Gad!

I was trying to avoid getting into the "Hindus kill Moslems" stuff, because there are a zillion instances of it, but the Hindus always justify it with the "Moslems kill Hindus" stuff.

Good grief, aren't we tired of their petty squabbles that they use to murder each other by now.

The Brits did them no good by leaving alone to their own religions.

BTW, didn't realize the guy was an Aussie, but wasn't he involved in missionary work for a denomination with an American origin?

[muawiyah]

Vlad, I originally identified the missionary as a "Christian missionary". In a later post I noted that an American Christian missionary wouldn't be expected to engage in violence.

Not quite sure how you convert someone to Christianity with violence anyway ~ hit them with a cross, or maybe spin a collection plate past their head like a metal frisbie? Total mystery on that concept ~ these Hindus are truly insrutible sometimes.

[VladimirX]

If Islam indeed spread peacefully around the globe, maybe those hundreds of thousands of young Slavanic girls were also glad that they were sold as sex slaves to the Muslim Turks ?

Dont think Islam was peacefully accepted by Hindu/buddhist Indians or even Zoroastrian Iranians. The typical nature of its followers doesnt give me enough reason to believe so.

The Mullahs most probably had an "Islam or Death" policy, while the anglican church was offering "Cake or Death" incentives ;)

[sukhoi-30mki]

The vast majority of Hindus are perfectly sane folks who mind their own business-one of the main causes for the growth of Hindu extremism in the early 90s were the appeasement of Indian Muslims as well as Pakistani sponsored terrorism.Even Muslim historians will testify to the fact that Muslims have always resorted to plunder & rape against Hindus when they began their expeditions into the subcontinent.

[muawiyah]

Depends on your brand of Islam ~ it's not all one thing.

BTW, if Slavonic girls were being captured by the Turks back during the 1100s, I'd say that was a step up the economic ladder of major proportions.

Do you have any idea what life was like when the Vikings still patrolled the Volga and other Russian rivers? They did their last human sacrifice (using young maidens on the boat of the dead chieftain) in the 1700s!

Of course, not all Vikings were alike ~ no doubt some became good Orthodox folk, and maybe even contributed a priest or two.

[montag813]

The destruction of the Babri mosque and subsequent violence against Muslims was one of the proudest moments in Indian history, and a model for the entire world on how to deal with Muslim shrines. Israel made a critical error in not demolishing the interloping Jerusalem mosques in June 1967.

[muawiyah]

Still, there used to be a lot of Buddhists in India ~ but from about 700 AD onward they appear to have been exterminated ~ but not by the Moslems.

Maybe the Jains did it, eh?!

[montag813]

BUILD IT ALREADY!!! WHY IS THIS IN THE "COURTS"???

[VladimirX]

Vlad, I originally identified the missionary as a "Christian missionary". In a later post I noted that an American Christian missionary wouldn't be expected to engage in violence.

I know. Poor man, died for his beliefs in a cruel manner in an alien culture. Not too atypical though :(

Not quite sure how you convert someone to Christianity with violence anyway ~ hit them with a cross, or maybe spin a collection plate past their head like a metal frisbie? Total mystery on that concept ~ these Hindus are truly insrutible sometimes.

metal frisbie, eh ?? gives me some ideas for my new novel ;)

[muawiyah]

Jews are not barbarians.

[Torie]

The destruction of the Babri mosque and subsequent violence against Muslims was one of the proudest moments in Indian history, and a model for the entire world on how to deal with Muslim shrines. Israel made a critical error in not demolishing the interloping Jerusalem mosques in June 1967.

And that is a perfectly awful sentiment. Shame. It's evil.

[montag813]

Bring us up to date on the "temple". Show us a website that displays the professionally excavated evidence that there was ever a Hindu temple there.

Hmmm...you sound an awful lot like the Arabs who claim that there was never a temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Muslims are notorious for destroying and supplanting other religious shrines all around the world, and then eliminating evidence of the prior sites.

[muawiyah]

It's in the courts to determine WHO owns the site. The mosque on the site had been long abandoned anyway. Further, the discovery that there was a foundation for a temple in the Indian style did not demonstrate that the particular Hindu sect who claimed ownership actually owned the site.

It could very well have been a Buddhist temple.

The current dispute in the United States that parallels this one the closest concerns Kenniwick Man. Fortunately we Americans are much more peaceful than the parties disputing the temple site.

[sukhoi-30mki]

Not exactly,a lot of them reconverted to Hinduism due to a number of social reform movements including by Adi Sankara.Only a handful of groups persecuted Buddhists & there were plenty of forcible conversions to Islam after the 10th century.

[montag813]

Jews are not barbarians.

You mean like the Arab Muslims who destroyed Josephs's Tomb?