The High Court of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, finally decided a 61-year-old suit over possession of a disputed site in the temple city of Ayodhya, where, in 1992, a howling mob of Hindu extremists tore down the Babri Masjid mosque. The mosque was built in the 1520’s by India’s first Mogul emperor, Babur, on a site traditionally believed to have been the birthplace of the Hindu god-king Ram, the hero of the 3,000-year-old epic, the Ramayana.