CHENNAI, India — Much like Charles Dickens' immortal classic "Tale of Two Cities," India's own saga of two religious shrines has been fraught with tragedy. On a cold December morning in 1992, a nearly 500-year-old mosque at Ayodhya, central India, was razed to the ground. Fanatical Hindus owing allegiance to equally fanatical political parties used crowbars and spades to destroy the mosque, pulling it down systematically brick by brick.
The mosque was built in 1527 on the orders of Babur, India's first Mughal emperor. The site where the mosque went up reportedly had been a Hindu temple, and still is revered as the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram.
Unlike Gautam Buddha or Mahavir, Ram is a creation of mythology, not strictly borne out by history. It is possible that several extant versions of the Ram myth have been inspired by a real person, divine or semi-divine.