ARVIND SHARMA was born in India where he served as a civil servant before embarking on an academic career in the West. He is the Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University in Montreal, Canada and currently engaged in promoting the adoption of a Universal Declaration of the Human Rights by the World's Religions.

• Notes on the Contributors Introduction; A.Sharma The Muslim Minority Before and After Ayodhya; T.P.Wright, Jr. In the Shadow of Ayodhya: Secularism in India; J.J.Carroll Reconstructing 'Ram Rajya:' Tradition, Politics and the Bharatiya Janata Party; M.A.Cook The Politics of Paradise: Islam, Identity and Politics in India; D.K.Vajpeyi The Case for a Divorce Between Religion and Politics; S.C.Kashyap Historical Narrative and Nation-State in India; S.A.Hoffmann Hindutva : The Indian Secularists' Metaphor for Illness and Perversion; S.Tilak India's Only Communalist: An Introduction to the Work of Sita Ram Goel; K.Elst The Strains of Hindu-Muslim Relations: Babri Masjid, Music and Other Areas Where the Traditions Cleave; V.Narayanan Index