And in 1992, widespread Hindu-Muslim violence erupted after Hindu extremists demolished the Babri mosque at Ayodhya.
It still wants a temple built at Ayodhya, and it still preaches swadeshi (economic nationalism).
Mr Madhav expects 1m people to turn up and to move on to Ayodhya for a peaceful demonstration.
The reality behind the mask was seen at Ayodhya, and that will be a difficult hurdle for Mr. Vajpayee to surmount.
One was Ayodhya Prasad Chaubey, an Indian man shot in August.
The archaeologists' report was ordered by the court hearing an ownership dispute which has been under way since 1949 about the site in Ayodhya.
In Ayodhya itself the priest of the makeshift Hindu temple built where the mosque once stood rues the day it was ever destroyed.
There is, after all, another, more haunting image of the party and its affiliated organizations which can be summed up in one word: Ayodhya.
She is a controversial figure in Indian politics, having been accused of inciting Hindu hardliners who destroyed the Babri mosque near Ayodhya in 1992.
Even the Gujarat violence was related to it: it followed the burning to death of several dozen Hindu activists on a train from Ayodhya.
The Gujarat violence was sparked by the death of several dozen Hindu activists in an arson attack on a train coming back from Ayodhya.
The whole Ayodhya matter started as a political gimmick and now after 12 years, it has become more of an ego issue for both the community leaders.
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It concerned ownership of a medieval mosque-site in Ayodhya, in eastern UP, and in 1992 had prompted Hindu-Muslim rioting across north India in which at least 2, 000 died.
In 1992, after the Babri mosque was demolished in the northern town of Ayodhya, Mumbai witnessed its worst-ever riots between Hindus and Muslims which went on for weeks.
On Dec. 6, 1992, virtually the entire national leadership of the party watched from a platform as a mob of Hindu militants reduced Ayodhya's 16th-century Babri Masjid to rubble.
They were allegedly also taking reprisals for anti-Muslim communal rioting: the killing of more than 900 people in Mumbai following the destruction of the Ayodhya mosque the previous year.
Of the 58 people asphyxiated or burned to death, many were Hindu devotees, returning from a gathering at the contested site of a temple in the holy town of Ayodhya.
The latest attacks came just hours after news that a report by archaeologists seemed to confirm Hindu claims that there had been a Hindu temple beneath the mosque at Ayodhya.
In the past, the group has expressed anger at the treatment of Muslims in Hindu-majority India and over the destruction in 1992 of the mosque in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh state.
The party may suspend its past manifesto, which calls for the building of a Hindu temple in Ayodhya, where Hindu zealots tore down a mosque in 1992, and other inflammatory measures.
He praised Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Islamic country's founder, and said he was sad about the destruction, in 1992, of a mosque built on the alleged site of a Hindu temple in Ayodhya.
Muslims were targeted by Hindu rioters in revenge for an attack on a train carrying Hindu activists back from the town of Ayodhya, the focus of a dispute over plans to build a temple.
At its end, on January 21st, the group may announce a date for building a temple in Ayodhya, another holy city, where a mosque stood until it was demolished by Hindu zealots in 1992.
Its government, whose six-year tenure ended last month, included a number of politicians facing criminal prosecution for involvement in a riot in 1992 when a mosque was demolished at Ayodhya, triggering widespread communal violence.
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It surged to prominence in the late 1980s by campaigning to build a temple at Ayodhya, on the site of a 400-year-old mosque that desecrated, it said, the birthplace of the Hindu god, Lord Ram.
The party had, in 1989, extended its strong support to the hardline Hindu Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) for the construction of a temple to the Hindu god Ram in place of an ancient mosque in Ayodhya.
Most strikingly, the Mumbai bombs went off just hours after reports that archaeologists had found some evidence of a tenth-century Hindu temple beneath the site of the 16th-century Babri mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya.
These include the building of a temple on the ruins of the mosque demolished in Ayodhya in 1992, abolishing Kashmir's special autonomy, and replacing the personal law of Muslims and other minorities with a common civil code.
The 1993 blasts were allegedly carried out to avenge Muslims who were killed in riots that broke out across the country after a mosque in the city of Ayodhya the Babri Masjid was demolished by Hindu groups in December 1992.
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