Successive Indian regimes escalated Ayodhya from local dispute into national confrontation

Evidence

The platform supplied the occasions for repeated Hindu–Muslim confrontations and for the program of building a Hindu temple on the site (Brass 1994, 241). Colonial authorities scotched the program. Shortly after independence, fifty to sixty local Hindus occupied the site one night and there installed Hindu idols. In response to Muslim demands, however, the newly independent (and avowedly secular) Indian government seized and locked up the mosque. During the 1980s, militant Hindu groups centering on the nationalist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) started demanding destruction of the mosque and erection of a temple to Ram. Just before the 1989 elections, RSS-affiliated Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) activists transported what they called “holy bricks” to Ayodhya and ceremoniously laid a foundation for their temple. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 408

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 408
• XREF: connects to: Sinhalese-Tamil enmity was retroactively projected onto a local dynastic war — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 75; India’s political settlement was forced to accommodate social divisions — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 840

Broader Connections

• Sinhalese-Tamil enmity was retroactively projected onto a local dynastic war #expands (0.72) — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 75
• India’s political settlement was forced to accommodate social divisions #corroborates (0.71) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 840