Ancient Hate Has India on Edge of Chaos

March 14 -- Feb. 28 was the worst day in Imran Topiwala's life and he hopes it will stay that way.

A businessman from a predominantly Muslim neighborhood in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, Topiwala and his family had to flee their apartment that fateful morning when a mob of thousands of enraged Hindus stormed their apartment complex.

But harrowing as that experience was, Topiwala fears Friday could be a lot worse.

In a religious row that threatens to plunge the subcontinent into yet another horrific round of mass slaughters, Hindu hard-liners have set March 15 as a date to hold a controversial religious ceremony on a disputed site in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya.

Indian Muslims have opposed the ceremony because they fear it will pave the way for the building of a Hindu temple where a 16th century mosque was smashed to rubble by Hindu hard-liners in 1992.

On Wednesday, the Indian Supreme Court upheld an earlier ruling that "no religious ceremony of any kind" could be performed on the site until several legal cases were settled.

But the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad), the right-wing Hindu organization at the heart of dispute, indicated it would go ahead with the controversial ceremony near the site where the mosque was torn down. Earlier today, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee vowed to uphold the court order and the government has launched a huge security operation around the disputed site, which is now under government control.

For Topiwala, a 28-year-old Muslim owner of a software business firm, legal rulings and political assurances made in the Indian capital of New Delhi offers him no real protection.

"We're still scared, very scared," he says during a phone interview with ABCNEWS.com. "The public is not going to protect us and the police is not going to protect us. It's very tense here, but all we can do is just wait and watch and pray for the best."

Attacked by a Mob

For Topiwala, New Delhi, with its wide boulevards and manicured gardens, is a world away from the madness his family has to cope with in volatile Ahmedabad.