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1.) Hindu-Muslim conflict was the cause of the Partition of India in 1947, with hundreds of thousands killed in contributing violence., Hindu-Muslim violent conflict happened regularly in different parts of northern India. From the middle-80s, a Hindu religious extremist movement gained momentum. This lead to the destroying of a mosque in the town of Ayodhya in 1992, and a horrifying protest against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 following the burning of Hindus in a train coach. Even in areas that have been largely free of communal violence, anti-Muslim feelings are strong, and there is a lack of any substantive inter-relationship for the majority of urban, educated Hindus.

In many parts of urban India, there is near complete spatial, social and cognitive segregation of the two communities. But for hundreds of years, Hindus and Muslims have lived together peacefully, and common folk have together built an continuing “dialogue of life”. Fundamentalist ideologies - a product of colonial divide-and-rule policy - are, however, destroying India’s heritage of communal peace. From the mid-1980s the divide has deepened, with the growth of Hindu disobedience.

3.)The Muslim emperor Babur established his authority over the whole of northern India when he took over the Rajputana kingdom of Mewar and the Hindu King of Chittodgad, Rana Sangrama Singh, at the battle of Khanwa. After his victory, his general, Mir Baqshi became governor of the area by Awadh.

Mir Baqshi built the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya naming it after Emperor Babur, after reportedly destroying a pre-existing temple o f Rama at the site. Although there is no reference to the new mosque, The contemporary Tarikh-i-Babari records that Babur's troops "demolished many Hindu temples at Chanderi".

7.)A decade ago, Hindu-Muslim strife over the disputed holy site at Ayodhya helped accelerate India's current ruling party from the political margins to the corridors of power. Now that same strife threatens to topple the government of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Seventy people were killed in Gujarat province on Thursday, as Hindu mobs attacked Muslims and torched a mosque and other Islamic buildings. The violence came as payback for Wednesday's firebombing by Muslims of a train car carrying Hindu activists coming back from Ayodhya. Fifty-eight civilians, many of them women and children, died in that attack, fueling outrage that threatens to spark a new wave of communal bloodletting throughout India.

