Tensions on anniversary of mosque's destruction

All morning yesterday, Fatima Shaikh was in tears. It was a holiday, the festival of Eid. But she and hundreds of other Muslim women living among the mud lanes and back-street hovels of Ahmedabad devoted their energies to their grief.

They were weeping for relatives and friends who were killed when a Hindu mob tore through their streets during a wave of sectarian blood-letting which ripped across India's western state of Gujarat like a forest fire in March and April.

In Fatima's neighbourhood of Naroda, in eastern Ahmedabad, nearly 100 people were killed. Statewide, human rights groups estimate the death toll at about 2,000, making it one of the bloodiest episodes in a long chain of violence to blight India.

The women mourned yesterday because it was a special Muslim festival, and yet so many of their own were not there. "We lost 19 people in my extended family alone," said Fatima, 40. "It was terrible, terrible. We have been crying all morning, and all of last night."

It was also the anniversary of an episode in India's history of communal strife that played a part in the chain of events that led to the orgy of murder and rape that engulfed Naroda.

Exactly 10 years have elapsed since thousands of Hindu fundamentalists armed with spades and iron bars tore down the 16th-century Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya. Yesterday, fearful of violence, India's security forces flooded the streets.

To the perpetrators, the destruction of the mosque was an act of liberation: they believed it was built on the site of the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama. They have been seeking to build a temple in its place ever since.

It was also the culmination of a six-year campaign by hardline Hindu nationalists who march under the umbrella of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or National Volunteer Corps.

Among the members of the RSS's so-called "family" of organisations is the BJP, the party that leads India's coalition government under the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a relative moderate. One of the chief instigators of the Ayodhya campaign was Lal Krishna Advani, who has since become Deputy Prime Minister.

Many of India's Muslims – who form 12 per cent of India's population of one billion – see the Ayodhya incident as a vital sign of the rise of virulent anti-Muslim nationalism. The spark that led to the Gujarati massacres came when a Muslim mob set fire to a train carrying Hindus travelling from Ayodhya, killing 58 on 27 February.

Yesterday, India held its breath amid fears that the anniversary would bring another bout of bloodshed.

The security forces were thick on the ground in Gujarat, which is bracing for next week's state elections – a fight between the opposition Congress party and the BJP, led by a Hindu nationalist hardliner, Narendra Modi.

The anti-Muslim rhetoric of Mr Modi is drawing appreciative crowds. His task is made easier by Islamist militancy – including al-Qa'ida's activities – and a spate of recent attacks on temples.

But his rhetoric is stirring up the strife between Gujarat's Hindus and Muslims, whose wounds are still raw after the bloodbath in March.

There are still many unsettled scores in this state of 50 million people – a fact that preys on the mind of Fatima Shaikh and her friends. "Modi is hated in these streets. If he wins, we think the Hindus will come and kill us all," she said.