Overwhelming troop presence in northern India on Friday prevented Hindu fanatics from getting near the site where they demolished a 16th century mosque 10 years ago, avoiding the risk of communal violence, but the row over the holy site is far from over.

''This will be a problem in the future for the whole nation,'' admitted I D Swami, junior minister for home in the 21-party ruling coalition that is led by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The BJP, led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, is a political beneficiary of the campaign to build a grandiose temple at the site in Ayodhya town of northern Uttar Pradesh state where the Babri mosque once stood.

The BJP is already under fire from its allies in the coalition, called the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), as well as from secular opposition parties like the powerful Congress party, for colluding with the fanatical Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) or World Hindu Forum, which is spearheading the temple-building agenda.

The council on Friday followed a Supreme Court ruling barring religious activities ''of any nature, by anyone'' at the dispute site itself, but it and the Hindu fanatics it led forced the government, at a nearby location, to symbolically accept a carved pillar for the temple they have sworn to build at the controversial area.

The VHP's leader, Praveen Togadia, made it clear that Friday's shiladaan (ceremonial handing over of a carved pillar to a government official) was only more step in ''defeating forces that are inimical to the temple we will build at the site where Lord Rama was born''.

''The breaking of locks on the Babri Masjid in 1986, the laying of a foundation stone for a temple in 1989, the destruction of the Babri structure in 1992 and now the handing over of the shila are important steps in achieving our goal,'' Togadia said.

The razing of the Babri Masjid in 1992 sparked off communal violence across the country, causing the deaths of at least 3,000 people.

Stoking fears

Plans by Hindu extremists to carry out construction of a temple to Lord Rama  including Friday's rites  have stoked fears of another round of Hindu-Muslim tensions.

But Togadia was only recounting the contemporary history of a site where Hindus believe the warrior deity Rama was born 10,000 years ago and which has been the source of trouble between Hindus and Muslims ever since the Babri Masjid was constructed in 1528 by invading Mughals.

The Hindus saw their opportunity in the defeat of the Mughals by British colonisers, who recorded incidents at the site as far back as 1853.

Two years after the end of British rule in 1947 and the creation of Pakistan as a homeland for India's Muslims, someone planted idols of Rama in the tri-domed Babri mosque, forcing the local administration to seal the imposing structure.

''Hindus have waited 500 years to rebuild the temple and cannot wait any longer for the government or for a judicial settlement, '' Togadia declared.

Muslim organisations say they are willing to accept any settlement handed down by the courts on who has title to the site the mosque stood on.

According to Togadia and other members of the VHP, the Hindu majority (which forms 75 percent of India's one billion people) is being denied their ''fundamental right'' by pseudo-secularists'' and by Pakistan's Inter services Intelligence (ISI).

The whole project would have been laughable except that religion does have a magnetic appeal in a country that is crippled by mass illiteracy and poverty and can be manipulated to bring in electoral dividends  as the BJP and its ally the VHP have convincingly proven.

Through the nineties, the BJP steadily transformed itself from a small regional party into the wielder of national power with little to offer ordinary people, but the temple to Rama and the communal strife that their one-point agenda has brought in India, home to the world's second largest Muslim community after Indonesia.

Spectacular defeats

But there are definite limits to what Rama can do for the BJP. The party has suffered a series of spectacular electoral defeats in provincial elections of major states, since the BJP formed the present NDA coalition in Oct 1999.

Last month, the BJP lost provincial elections in four states including Uttar Pradesh, where Ayodhya is situated. That in spite of trying to keep alive the temple-building issue  such as by allowing the work of carving mammoth granite pillars at a workshop specially built for the purpose close to the disputed site.

The only major state where the BJP now holds power in is western Gujarat, where communal riots erupted over the Ayodhya site two weeks ago. In contrast, the Congress party controls 14 states and is the main opposition in most of the others.

One reason why the VHP abided by the court order preventing any change of the status quo at the disputed site  and then abandoned plans for a consecration ceremony there  was the fear that pushing too hard could bring down the ruling coalition and cripple future prospects for the BJP, and for the council itself.

BJP rapped

In Parliament, currently in session, the BJP is busy fending off criticism from the Congress party and its own allies for getting the attorney general to plead, unsuccessfully, in court to allow the VHP to carry out symbolic consecration ceremony after promising to remain neutral.

The Telugu Desam Party, which rules southern Andhra Pradesh state, and is the most important supporter of the NDA coalition, has reminded the federal government that it is bound to maintain the status quo at Ayodhya ordered by the Supreme Court.

On Friday, the Congress party' Italian-born chief and opposition leader Sonia Gandhi accused the BJP-led government of colluding with the VHP by sending a senior official to receive the shila or carved stone to symbolise the temple it wants to build.

''The Centre tacitly connived with the VHP and has now been exposed as openly collaborating with them,'' said Gandhi.

She also accused the government of ''not knowing its mind'' and being ''full of contradictions which puts factional pressures above national interests and caves in to communal forces.''

Said Marxist party leader and senior parliamentarian Somanth Chatterjee: ''This is the first instance of the government of India participating in a religious ceremony.''

India is secular by Constitution and the government is supposed to be neutral to all religions.

But Togadia has countered Chatterjee's accusation by citing the annual subsidy that the government gives to Muslims undertaking the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca, which is a major sore point with the VHP.

The VHP has not quite eased pressure at Ayodhya and has asked its volunteers to gather once again on March 24 to conclude the ceremonies it began on Friday.

That would necessitate another round of paramilitary mobilisation to protect the disputed site  and prevent sparks that could light communal violence all over again. (IPS)