India has barred public gatherings in the town of Ayodhya as the Supreme Court started hearing final arguments today to decide whether a Hindu temple should be built on the ruins of a mosque in a long-running dispute.

The razing of the 16th-century Babri mosque by Hindu mobs in 1992 led to one of secular India's deadliest bouts of communal riots, in which at least 2,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed across the country.