NEW DELHI - Nearly 30 years ago, Hindu extremists armed with pickaxes tore down a 16th-century mosque in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya, sparking riots that killed thousands of Muslims.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi fulfilled a campaign promise to his Hindu nationalist base by laying the cornerstones of a grand Hindu shrine on that very same spot.

The ceremony coincides with the first anniversary of India's revocation of special rights in Kashmir, its only Muslim-majority state.

Under Modi, both Ayodhya and Kashmir have become symbols of Hindu nationalist dominance over India, despite the secularism enshrined in its constitution — and a painful affront to the country's Muslims. About 1 in 6 Indians is Muslim; they're the country's largest religious minority and one of the largest Muslim communities in the world.

"The word 'Ayodhya' brings back haunting memories. When the Babri Masjid was demolished, it was when for your next-door neighbors, for your schoolmates, you became a Muslim overnight," says author and activist Rana Ayyub, who was 9 years old in 1992 and had to go into hiding amid Hindu-Muslim riots in her native Bombay, now Mumbai. "It ripped apart the facade of India being a secular nation, a democratic republic."

India's constitution defines it as a secular republic, but Modi and his BJP have sought to transform the country into a Hindu nation with special rights for members of its majority faith. In recent years, minority Muslims have increasingly become victims of hate crimes and lynchings.