The destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in December, 1992, by militant Hindus acting with the blessings of certain religious Hindu leaders and the active encouragement of political bosses clearly suggested to all concerned Indians that the malicious and orchestrated attacks upon minorities threatened the pluralistic fabric of Indian society. The Coalition's founders and its other friends and supporters took the view that they could not stand by silently while militants went on a rampage, but they have always recognized that there are forces in India, and the other South Asian nations, that are just as much firmly committed to making India an equitable and fully democratic society. As Professor Shukla put it in an editorial in the coalition's informal newsletter in June 1995, "Our citizenry in both Bombay and the entire nation arose [following the violence in the wake of the mosque's destruction] to a man to challenge and exorcize the demons of death and darkness. With rare courage and at great personal risk, groups of noble Indian, eminent and ordinary, cried a halt to the savagery, to put out the fires of communal frenzy, set out to heal the wounds and wipe the tears of the victims, and exerted vigorously to restore humanity to a traumatized populace. To pay our humble homage to their daunting enterprise and to stand with them in solidarity, we had launched our modest coalition." At the same time, the Coalition also recognizes that, with the rapid growth of South Asian communities in Southern California (and indeed the rest of the nation), there is an imperative need both to foster better relations between South Asians and other minorities, and to provide young South Asians with alternative insights into the nature of South Asian history, culture, and politics that would stress, contrary to those who insist upon the communalized histories and fractured pasts of the Indian sub-continent, the composite nature of Indian civilization, and the uniquely syncretistic cultures forged in that part of the world over a very long period of time.