NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist party has been turning up the heat on some controversial and potentially highly divisive religious issues in recent days, with crucial state elections only weeks away and a general election due by next May.

FILE PHOTO: A model of a proposed Ram temple, which Hindus want to build on the site of the demolished Babri Mosque, is pictured in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya September 30, 2010. REUTERS/Mukesh Gupta/File photo

Top officials from his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have sided with some Hindus defying a court order that scrapped a ban on women of menstruating age from visiting a famous temple in southern India.

At the same time, they and leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu-first group from which the BJP was born, are for the first time demanding an urgent executive order that would bypass the Supreme Court, to build a Hindu temple at the site of a mosque in the north of the country.

The destruction of the mosque by a frenzied Hindu mob in 1992 sparked deadly riots across the country.

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