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Is India's nationalist government finally losing patience with its Hindu extremist allies? Last Friday, Hindu hardliners staging a protest in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya found themselves under fire from an unexpected quarter: state and federal police wielding wooden lathes and batons and firing rubber bullets and tear gas. By day's end more than 1,000 Hindu activists were in custody and another 15,000 had been loaded on to buses and trains and sent away. An outraged Ashok Singhal, leader of the rally's organizer, the militant Hindu group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), was moved to declare: "They treat Hindus like animals in this country."

Few Indians would agree. Usually, it's the Muslims who feel like victims. The presence of a coalition government in New Delhi led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which draws support from the VHP, has prompted many Muslims to cry foul. They claim the BJP is anti-Islam, discriminates against Muslims in the civil service, and ignored last year's rampage in Gujarat state, when Hindu mobs killed 2,000 Muslims and injured and raped thousands more.

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Initially it seemed state prosecutors would convict few Hindus for their part in the riots. But last month India's Supreme Court ordered a retrial. And last week's events signaled an apparent further widening of the gap between the Indian establishment and the VHP, when months of rancor over the BJP's delay in building a temple to the Hindu god Ram at Ayodhya spilled over into the streets.

The seeming split has huge significance. It was Hindu chauvinists—galvanized by a BJP campaign to undo brick by brick the 16th-century Mughal invasion of the subcontinent—who in 1992 ripped down a mosque supposedly built over a Hindu temple at Ayodhya; that helped propel the BJP to power on a wave of violent Hindu assertion. But upcoming polls may be forcing the BJP to distance itself from the VHP. With four state elections taking place on Dec. 1, and a general election due within the year, the BJP's more moderate coalition partners are pressing it to adopt a less sectarian line in order to appeal to more voters. Says political analyst Praful Bidwai: "The relationship between the VHP and BJP looks bad, and it seems like the two will drift apart further." The implications for the region are no less important. While the bloody dispute over Kashmir has many causes, the stridently nationalist line adopted by the BJP government toward Pakistan has proved a major obstacle to dialogue.

But the country's Hindu-Muslim troubles, an animosity that dates back hundreds of years, are hardly over. A bombing campaign by Islamic extremists is ongoing in Gujarat and Bombay, while the Hindu hard right, including the VHP, is now promising a national protest campaign over Ayodhya. Moreover, Bidwai points out, the VHP's overseas Indian members are big donors to the BJP. So while India may be witnessing a trial separation within the Hindu nationalist camp, no one is yet predicting a divorce.

• Alex Perry | New Delhi and Sara Rajan | Ayodhya
• Is India's Hindu nationalist government taking steps to rein in its own hardliners?