A second incident in April occurred in a remote mountain district in the Udhampur district, between Srinagar and Jammu. In that attack, 29 Hindu villagers, including 13 women and children, were killed.

The April massacre caused a wave of outrage across India that was compounded by the accounts given by survivors, who said the killers struck after the villagers refused demands from the gunmen that they become Muslims and prove their conversion by eating beef. This is forbidden among Hindus, who regard cows as sacred. The survivors said that the killers forced other villagers to watch as they singled out their victims, killing many of them by cutting their throats.

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Since it began in 1989, the Kashmir insurgency has taken at least 20,000 lives -- India's estimate -- and perhaps as many as 50,000 -- the figure given by Muslim guerrilla groups. At least half the casualties have been civilians. Many have been victims of what international human rights groups have described as a pattern of abuses by Indian security forces and Muslim insurgents. In scores of cases documented by the rights groups, the two sides have made civilians their targets.

But the massacres of Hindus in recent months have raised especially strong feelings elsewhere in India, especially in the period since March, when a new Government took power in New Delhi headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party, a Hindu nationalist group that has traditionally followed a hard-line policy on Kashmir.

After the April killings, top officials of the new Government vowed to step up the war against the insurgents, and warned of possible retaliation against Pakistan, which India has accused of training, arming and financing the insurgents.

The warnings were stepped up after India's underground nuclear tests last month, raising fears that India might pursue insurgents into the part of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan, risking a wider war between the two nations. When Pakistan detonated its own nuclear tests two weeks after India's, the United States and other countries expressed alarm at the heightened tensions and urged both countries to open immediate discussions on Kashmir settlement.

India's Home Minister, L. K. Advani, who recently assumed overall control of Indian policy in the state, described the killing of the wedding guests today as ''a clear attempt at ethnic cleansing'' and said responsibility for the attack, and the other massacres of Hindus, rested with Pakistan. Mr. Advani ordered additional Indian troops moved into the area of the attack, in the Doda district of southern Kashmir, and said the assailants would be hunted down.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee issued his own condemnation, saying India would exact the ''sternest'' punishment on the insurgents, whom he described as ''enemies of peace.'' Mr. Vajpayee, widely viewed as a moderate among the Hindu nationalists who dominate in the Government, has repeatedly appealed to Pakistan in recent weeks for talks on nuclear and other issues. But he has refused Pakistan's demand for foreign mediation in the Kashmir dispute, saying the issue must be settled directly by India and Pakistan.