Allahabad:
In two weeks, a court will decide one of India's most divisively and destructively-argued debates - which came first - Ram Janmbhoomi or the Babri Masjid.
The verdict by the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court will end a lawsuit that began sixty years ago.
For most Indians, however, the brutal moment of awareness came on December 6, 1992, when thousands of kar sevaks, led by BJP and RSS leaders, demolished the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, in what they described as their fight to reclaim the birthplace of Lord Ram.
In 1949, an idol of Lord Ram was furtively placed inside the mosque at Ayodhya. The unrest that followed forced the government to confiscate the site. Then came a series of lawsuits.
The first, by Gopal Singh Visharad, a member of the Hindu Mahasabha, petitioned that the idol of Lord Ram should not be removed from the premise. In 1959 came a second law suit from Nirmohi Akhara, a Hindu religious group, who asked to be given charge of the site. In 1961 came a third suit filed by the UP Sunni Waqf Board, asking the site be declared as Babri Masjid. The final case was filed in 1989, in the name of Bhagwan Shree Ram Lalla Virajman, asking that the disputed site be declared Ram Janmabhoomi.
All these lawsuits were clubbed together and the court then asked the Archaeological Survey of India to excavate the site to understand if a temple existed before Emperor Babar built Babri Masjid in 1528.
Worried about a violent reaction to the verdict, the state government is also preparing to step up security.