The Fire This Time

Muslims are intolerant ... They only look out for one another ... Even America has discovered that. This is murderous talk, heard these days with astonishing frequency throughout India, in teahouses, in crowded commuter trains, in the classroom, at the dinner table. They need to be taught a lesson ... The time has come ...

In late February, India experienced a paroxysm of violence between Hindus and Muslims. A group of Muslims in the western state of Gujarat burned 58 Hindus alive on a train. In response, Hindus went on a three-day rape, pillage and murder rampage that claimed the lives of 427 people. It was the worst violence between the two communities since riots in Bombay in 1993 claimed 800 lives.

But after the clashes in 1993, the hate swiftly receded. Today, the opposite is happening. The chaos in Gujarat was supposed to be quelled when the army was belatedly sent in. In fact, looting and murder continue with both sides engaging in vengeful attacks. Nearly 300 people, mostly Muslims, have died since the first wave of violence, almost all in Gujarat. In some places, police allow rioters to continue un-molested. One special target of Hindu fury: those who resist the hate. Last week, a mob stripped and then beat a Hindu woman to death for protecting her Muslim friend; another mob fatally stabbed a Muslim man for having married a Hindu. "These people always take our women as one of their wives to beget Muslim children," says one activist for the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the extreme Hindu movement linked with India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

The truly frightening thing is that it's not just fanatics taking part in the anti-Muslim pogrom. Murder has gone middle class: businessmen are killing businessmen, farmers are fighting farmers, mothers are urging mobs to attack neighbors' children. Across the country, in the cities and out in the villages, Hindu "self-defense" groups are ransacking Muslims' shops and burning their homes. Vigilante patrols from each side keep watch over their respective communities. Among Hindus, talk of finishing the job left undone from the genocide of partition, in which up to a million people died in the bloody split of the subcontinent, is open and common. In the past month, more than 100,000 Muslims have fled their homes; business losses are estimated at $600 million.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has described the pogrom merely as "unfortunate." Pravin Togadiya, general secretary of the VHP, warns that he can see Hindu sentiment getting even more out of hand. Said one rioter in Ahmadabad, capital of Gujarat, as he watched his comrades pillage a cluster of Muslim homes: "We want to make sure the Muslims never come back." If there is one immutable law of nature, it is that violence begets violence, and hatred spawns more hate (think of the Middle East). India's long national nightmare may just be beginning.