India’s top court handed on Saturday a huge victory to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist ruling party by awarding Hindus control of a bitterly disputed holy site that has sparked deadly sectarian violence. India had stepped up security nationwide ahead of the decision and Modi called for calm, fearing the final ruling on an issue that has been a focal point of Hindu-Muslim tensions for decades could again trigger unrest. The Supreme Court ruled that the site in Ayodhya in northern India, where Hindu mobs destroyed a 460-year-old mosque in 1992, must be handed over to a trust to oversee the construction of a Hindu temple, subject to conditions.
