NEW DELHI/AYODHYA -- Police rounded up thousands across India on Friday to prevent Hindu-Muslim violence as a deadline drew near for prayers planned by hardline Hindus for a temple they want built on top of a razed mosque.

In the flashpoint Hindu pilgrim town of Ayodhya, in northern India, police in full riot gear and paramilitary troops patrolled the otherwise deserted streets to enforce a court verdict barring hardliners from holding prayers near the demolished mosque.

The fundamentalist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), from the same Hindu nationalist ideological family as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has nonetheless called on its supporters nationwide to pray for the temple at 2.15 p.m. (0845 GMT).

Police, fearing a new outbreak of religious violence after more than 700 died in unrest in western Gujarat state, rounded up VHP supporters and others across the country in what they said was a precautionary measure.

Around 10,000 were held in western Maharashtra state alone, mostly in the financial capital Bombay, scene of some of the ugliest Hindu-Muslim violence in the past.

In Ayodhya, a 93-year-old holy man who had said on Thursday he would die rather than abandon plans for ritual prayers near the site of the razed mosque, backed down and said he would hold the ceremony, or "puja", elsewhere in the town.

India's Supreme Court had on Wednesday barred the hardliners from praying on government-acquired land around the mosque, whose demolition in 1992 led to nationwide riots in which 3,000 died.

Ayodhya has long been a flashpoint for Hindu-Muslim tensions, and fearing a flood of Hindu hardliners, police have virtually sealed it off, blocking roads and cancelling trains.

Apart from security forces, totalling some 14,000, the town was deserted, its shops closed and shuttered as locals hid indoors. Hundreds of bemused monkeys squatted on the town's many temples, scavenged for food, and occasionally played with police.

A firebrand with a long grey beard, holy man Ramchandra Das Paramhans, said he would ceremonially hand over a carved stone prepared for the temple to a government official outside the controversial site.

"I have no intention of putting my foot on the acquired land," he told reporters. "Whatever I do, it will be done peacefully."

The Supreme Court had barred all religious ceremonies on the land acquired by the government after the 16th-century Babri Mosque was torn down, until an eventual ruling on whether it should go to Hindus or Muslims.