Hindu Group to Compromise on Temple

A militant Hindu group said Thursday that it will accept a compromise plan in its dispute with Muslims on building a temple on a site held holy by both sides.

“I am confident that the temple will be built peacefully, without shedding any blood of either Hindus or Muslims,” Ashok Singhal, the president of Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council, told reporters.

Muslim leaders welcomed the remark as a “positive development.”

Both statements reversed hard-line positions taken by leaders of both sides, which threatened to unravel the compromise formula hastily put forward this week.

It was feared that religious violence could break out if the Hindu nationalists started building the temple in the northern city of Ayodhya on March 15 as planned.

Hindu nationalists want to build the temple on the site of a 16th century mosque destroyed by Hindus in 1992. They say the site was the birthplace of Rama, an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. The razing of the mosque sparked sectarian riots that left at least 2,000 dead.

Tensions over the temple plan erupted into violence last week in the western state of Gujarat, and about 600 people died in the fighting.

Singhal said the Hindu council has committed to the compromise, under which the council would symbolically begin construction on March 15 by bringing the temple’s first pillars to an adjacent, government-owned spot.

The spokesman of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, S.Q.R. Illyas, said the council’s latest statement “will certainly make a difference.”