More than 540 people have been killed in violence since last Wednesday when 58 Hindus died in a train fire allegedly set by Muslims. Those killed in the train fire were returning from Ayodhya, the site of a 16th century mosque razed by Hindus in 1992. Hindu militants are planning to begin construction of a temple on that site in mid-March.
A British Muslim was also killed by Hindu zealots returning with three other British Muslims from visiting the Taj Mahal in Delhi on Wednesday.

"We are all devastated," Kazi, of Indian Muslim Welfare Society said.
The Babri Masjid is a mosque in Ayodhya, in the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India. It was built in the memory of the emperor Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur Badshah Ghazi, a minor prince of Ferghana who founded the Mughal empire in India, which ruled until it was finally replaced by the British Raj after the general mutiny of 1857 failed.
Was the masjid built after wrongfully demolishing a temple, moreso believed to be the birth site of the revered Ram? Archaeologists believe that there are some 30 proposed sites for Janambhouri and the Masjid could not have been over a mandir since the Mughuls had a policy to build both places of worship nearby with same material but different cultural architecture. Visit Delhi and you'll see that so obviously. In 1528-29 C.E.when Mir Baqi, a Mughal governor, built the Mosque in honour of Babar no account of destruction of any Hindu temple or association of Rama with the site in all Medieval literature was mentioned. It was 1534-1623 C.E. when Tulsi Das wrote the popular Hindi version of Ramayana, Ram Charit Manas. Sri Ram is raised to the status of full deity, an Avatar (incarnation) of Hindu God Vishnu. Tulsi Das never mentions association of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya with Ram-Janambhoomi. But in 1759-60 C.E. Raj Chaturman in his Chahar Gulshan (Four Gardens) first mentioned of modern Ayodhya as a possible place of Sri Rama's birth, but no association of Babri Masjid with it.
The Babri Masjid is a Protected Monument under the Ancient Monuments Act of 1904, and no body has the right to encroach upon its sanctity. Was there a temple beneath the Babri Masjid? Having examined the records of excavations conducted by Prof. B.B.Lal, former Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in the seventies at the Ayodhya site, preserved at the Purana Qila office of the ASI, a team of four historians and archaeologists came to the conclusion that there was no proof of it. They explained their findings and conclusions at the press conference held at the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), New Delhi, on October 23,1992. The experts:
Prof. R.S. Sharma, former Chairman of the ICHR; Prof. M. Athar Ali (Rtd.) Department of History, Aligarh University; Prof. Suraj Bhan (Rtd.), Professor of History, Kurukshetra University; and Prof. D.N. Jha, Professor of History, University of Delhi. They had earlier been to Ayodhya and made on the spot studies of the Ayodhya excavation site.
India had been falsely portraying itself as a secular state, whereas the fact was that the Muslims there were treated as second grade citizens.
Why human rights organisations are muffled with their silence over the issue? Shouldn't they urge the government and international human rights organisations to play an effective role to check atrocities on Muslims? Or are these uneducated impoverished old women, men and children of remote villages, like "plighted" Palestinians, suddenly 'sympathisers of terrorists', so they don't deserve even human sympathy?

Out there are multitudes of good-hearted people who could stem this erratic tide of mayhem violence by setting a courageous example, as always witnessed during such riots. While Gujarat was burning, a small town in Bihar set an example of communal amity, when a group of Hindus got together and protected a mosque from being vandalised. Shive Prasad was the captain of Bajrang Dal. He who was given the responsibility to guide four thousand Kar Sevak in the demolition of the Mosque in 1992,was fasting on 6th December, 1999 and regretting for the act with tears, seeking forgiveness from Allah in his prayers. Yes! Shive Prasad has embraced Islam. He has changed his name to Mohammed Mustafa. There are many like him.

A Muslim scholar in Benares last month pointed out, "the people who used to incite anti-Muslim violence and gain Hindu votes are now the rulers of India. They have to be more careful now." This happened when the extremist Hindu group Shiv Sena, that a judicial commission indicted for organising the killings of hundreds of Muslims in Bombay in January 1993 and who remains a close ally of the BJP, thought the court ban to build the temple has failed them miserably. They are now resorting to violence with tacit support from railways to outposts. The violence in Gujarat has finally broken what now seems a long, sullen peace. It must be stopped and the court order maintained while an independent enquiry brings to justice the perpetrators of such 'axis of evil' in the place Ibn Batuta referred to as "Wonders and mysteries" and Ghandhi as the" largest democracy". No, we cannot stand a massacre of such glorious history by a set of ill educated self-glorifying "terrorists"!