Walking Scared in India

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ai Singh Rana, a Hindu, serves as headman of Ajanwa, a remote village in eastern Gujarat. When Muslims were attacked in his area in March, he ran to the local police outpost. They refused to help. One constable asked why Rana was bothering, expressing his personal opinion that "the Muslims deserve to die like dogs." Rana called a local legislator who said paramilitary troops would be sent. But by then, 11 Muslims had been killed.

Ajanwa's Hindus and Muslims had lived in peace for years: only in the past decade, with the rise of the BJP in both New Delhi and Gujarat, has the divide grown. Muslim survivors say BJP members led the attacks in March. Some were arrested, but the main organizers charged with the killings are still free. "If only those four or five people are caught, there would be no trouble in the village and we could go back," says Mushtaq, who chooses to live in the nearby town of Lunawada and commute to his farm 25 kilometers away. Local police say the accused instigators have disappeared, but TIME met two—Raisingh Pula Baria and his cousin Salam Abha Baria—living openly in the village. Both identified themselves as members of the BJP, but denied they were involved in the killings. "We have talked to the Muslims and asked them to withdraw the charges," said Raisingh. "They know what they have to do but are being misguided by the headman." The BJP, they added, has hired lawyers to defend their uncle, who was jailed for participating in the riots.

Hindus who helped Muslims, like headman Rana, are receiving death threats. The VHP has circulated pamphlets urging Hindus to boycott Muslim businesses, refuse Muslims jobs and not work in their offices. Police reports on the riots adamantly emphasize that Muslims began them: the spark for the violence was a still unexplained firebombing of a train filled with Hindu pilgrims, in which 59 died. According to independent human-rights groups like the People's Union for Democratic Rights, most Hindus arrested for rioting were released on bail within days. In the first hearing in July, a judge in Lunawada dismissed the case for lack of evidence—as, in fact, he probably had to. "First the police refuse to file proper complaints," explains Amrish Patel, a member of Jan Sangharsh Manch (Forum for People's Struggle), a group that promotes Hindu-Muslim amity. "Then the police don't investigate properly. There is no rule of law for the Muslims."

Bilqis Yaqub Rasool used to live in the village of Randhikpur. When a local mob began its attack, she escaped into a forest with some relatives, including her three-year-old daughter. After three days in hiding, the group was discovered. Rasool watched as the mob smashed her daughter with a stone, killing her instantly. Then Rasool, who was five months pregnant, was raped by three assailants and left for dead. When she regained consciousness, all her relatives had been massacred.

Rasool now lives in a rented house in Godhra, a wealthy town of businessmen and farmers and a sizable Muslim population, with her husband, Yaqub, a cowherd. Rasool has identified all the members of the mob in a police complaint, including her three rapists. To date, none have been arrested. "They send word from the village that they will kill us both," says Yaqub. "If the government wanted, they could arrest all these people." He claims they've been spared because they are members of the BJP.

Gujarat, the birthplace of the mahatma, is a proudly pious state where alcohol is banned and vegetarianism extolled. Modi is expected to win the elections there handily. But there are some signs of a backlash, of public revulsion at what has occurred since February. "It was a doomed, horrible time and best forgotten," laments a shopkeeper in Ahmadabad, who admits to running with a mob that killed 83 people in the neighborhood of Naroda. "I think everyone lost all sense. Muslims were killed, but in the end we all suffered."

Almost all the Muslim victims from the countryside talk gratefully of the help they received from Hindus—though, most often, in villages other than their own—who hid them and brought them to the refugee camps. Still, anger is rising and retaliation possible. Earlier this month, a crude bomb exploded in a village, killing three Hindus near a school, and locals quickly blamed it on avenging Muslims. In Pandarwada, the Muslims are worried about the state elections. If Modi's side wins, they say, none of their attackers will be punished. Which makes going back to their old lives all but impossible. Ghani Ahmed, a driver, lives in a canvas tent but he's already purchased new books for his children to replace the ones torched in March because he wants them to become educated professionals. But his kids aren't in school: their names were struck off the rolls after they missed several months of classes. "They knew the children were in camps but they don't want them back," says Ahmed. Then he laughs wearily and says caustically, "I am going to send them to a madrasah instead. They may as well become Islamic clerics." These days, steely sarcasm is just about the only defense around.