NEW DELHI — Fierce Hindu-Muslim riots and pitched battles with police worsened significantly, killing at least 300 more people by today across India as embattled politicians and moderate religious leaders desperately sought to defuse the bloody cycle of attacks and reprisals that have inflamed the Indian subcontinent.
The reported death toll in two days of street riots climbed above 500, with about 2,000 injured, in the wake of the destruction of a long-disputed Muslim mosque Sunday by militant Hindu zealots in the dusty north Indian town of Ayodhya.
In some towns and cities, people have been brutally stabbed, chopped or burned to death by rampaging mobs. Deaths were reported in half of India's 22 states, as the world's largest democracy continued to splinter on raw religious fault lines.
Armed riot troops and army troops were widely deployed, in some cases with shoot-on-sight orders. Curfews were enforced in numerous Muslim areas for the second night to control the unrest.
The neighboring Muslim nations of Pakistan and Bangladesh were paralyzed by rock-throwing street protests in most major cities, the torching and bulldozing of scores of Hindu temples and national protest strikes.
At least 20 people were reported killed in anti-Hindu riots in Pakistan, including five women and children who burned to death in a firebombed temple.
In a country where politics and religion are inextricably linked, Indian Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao's government announced that it would ban extremist religious groups and ordered the arrest of key Hindu nationalist leaders on charges of openly inciting the attack on the ancient mosque.
The government hopes the sharp crackdown will undermine the growing force of the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP. The hard-line Hindu party emerged from obscurity in the last five years to become India's second-largest political party, largely by fanning anti-Muslim sentiment over the Ayodhya issue.
At least eight right-wing Hindu leaders were arrested, including BJP party chief L. K. Advani. As he was led away from his home, he told reporters that India is moving toward fascism. "This is a move to silence the voice of dissent," Advani said. "It will be suicidal for India."
In a pre-dawn attack at Ayodhya, paramilitary troops fired tear gas grenades to drive away hundreds of fanatic Hindus who already had begun constructing a Hindu temple atop the mosque's ruins. No casualties were reported as the troops retook control of the pilgrimage city, the only good news of the day.
