India’s Religious Conflict Deepens : Mosque: Police fire on mobs of Hindus at a disputed site in Ayodhya. Dozens more clashes erupt throughout the nation. At least 30 are killed.

India plunged deeper into religious conflict Friday as police opened fire on mobs of Hindus attempting a second assault on a disputed mosque in the holy city of Ayodhya, and dozens more clashes erupted between Hindus and Muslims throughout the country.

At least 30 people were killed Friday, bringing to more than 250 the total killed in the spiral of religious violence that began nearly a week ago.

The violence reached its first peak Tuesday, when part of a mob of thousands of Hindu fundamentalists broke through police lines and began trying to demolish the Ayodhya mosque. The mosque was built as a place of Muslim worship in the 16th Century but is on a site that Hindus also consider holy.

After the mob extensively damaged the mosque’s walls and dome Tuesday, police cleared the site. But the militants camped near the disputed shrine, and on Friday they made their second attempt.

Nearly half the day’s total deaths occurred at the site. Other people were killed elsewhere in the country when police fired on mobs that had set fire to mosques, temples and homes. According to one report, seven Muslims in India’s western state of Gujarat were tied, beaten, stabbed and then thrown into a burning house by a Hindu mob. Others were stabbed or beaten to death in street battles between Hindus and Muslims.

The Indian army was deployed in several parts of the country, and strict curfews have been imposed in the most troubled districts. But each time the curfews were relaxed to allow citizens to stock up on provisions, renewed violence exploded almost immediately.

Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh, who has twice offered his resignation during the last week, has been silent on the issue since Tuesday, when he warned in a speech to the nation that the dispute is the most critical test India has faced since its independence from Britain 43 years ago.

The long-simmering dispute centers on the 16th-Century Babri Masjid mosque, built by the Emperor Baber, who founded the Mogul dynasty of India. Hindus believe that the site was the birthplace of Hinduism’s legendary demigod, Lord Rama, and the place was taken over by Hindu worshipers decades ago.

Recently, Hindu fundamentalists announced that they would begin dismantling the mosque last Tuesday so that they could relocate it and build a Hindu temple on the site. Indian troops and police were alerted, and the stage was set for this week’s violence.

Singh, who asserts that he is acting only to preserve India’s constitutional identity as a home for all religions, has been widely criticized by his opponents and independent analysts for underestimating the size, passion and organization of the Hindu revivalist movement that is engineering the dispute over the temple-mosque.

The prime minister took a strong stand against the fundamentalists, arresting more than 100,000 of them and deploying tens of thousands of paramilitary troops in the days before Tuesday’s scheduled mosque demolition. Critics termed the actions a political ploy to ensure Singh the Muslim vote in expected mid-term national elections.

Although Hindus represent more than 80% of India’s 850 million people, they have not voted in a bloc in the past. Indian political analysts say elections are won and lost on the vote of the nation’s minority Muslims, who number more than 100 million.

In his most recent letter of resignation to his People’s Party, which has ruled in coalition with the Hindu fundamentalist Indian People’s Party since elections 11 months ago, Singh declared: “My conscience is clear that I have sacrificed the highest office for the cause of the unity of the country and the oppressed,” a reference to the Muslim minority.

“I am ready to make any further sacrifices in the interests of the country, the downtrodden and the party.”

Singh will probably be forced to do just that next week. Most analysts say his brief rule will come to an end when he faces the no-confidence vote scheduled in Parliament next Wednesday.

Also, the People’s Party, which holds just 141 of the 455 seats in Parliament, is scheduled to vote Monday on whether to remove Singh from its leadership even before Parliament convenes. Some analysts predict that the party may replace the soft-spoken son of a north Indian maharajah with another of its leaders to keep the ruling coalition alive.

If the party fails to find a consensus candidate, many experts say former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his long-ruling Congress-I party may well return to power in an alternative coalition.

Gandhi, grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru and son of the assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, presided last year over the Nehru family’s most bitter defeat in three generations, in part because of his stand on the same temple-mosque issue.

Just weeks before the elections, Gandhi had permitted the Hindu fundamentalists to lay a ceremonial foundation stone for their planned temple to Lord Rama at the site of the Babri Masjid mosque. Days later, the highest religious leader of India’s Muslims called on the faithful to vote against Gandhi’s party, which traditionally was guaranteed the Muslim vote. As a result, on election day last year, the Congress-I won just 193 seats.

Most analysts said Singh, a once-reluctant prime minister who only recently began asserting himself politically within his party and Parliament, is banking on the same Muslim vote in the next elections.