INDIA: Curfews were imposed yesterday following clashes between Hindus and Muslims, after the announcement of a landslide victory by the incumbent Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Gujarat state assembly elections.
Police said the "preventive" curfew was clamped on the industrial town of Baroda, 75 miles south of Gujarat's largest city Ahmedabad, when celebrating BJP supporters came to blows with Muslims.
Analysts said the BJP victory would impact adversely on Indian politics.
Trouble in the communally sensitive state erupted as the results in one of India's most emotionally charged elections gave the Hindu nationalists 126 seats or a two-thirds majority in the 182-member Gujarat assembly. The BJP won nine more seats than the 117 it got in the previous 1998 state elections, following the pogrom of Muslims across the state earlier this year in which more than 1,000 people died.
The administration of the BJP chief minister, Mr Narendra Modi, was accused of fuelling the sectarian rioting that broke out after a trainload of 59 Hindus were burnt to death allegedly by a Muslim mob on February 27th. The Hindu-Muslim clashes that followed raged across the state till May.
The main opposition Congress party, which claimed the BJP victory was achieved by pursuing a dangerous Hindu revivalist campaign of hate by attacking Muslims, managed only 51 seats, three less than its previous tally.
Congress leader Shankarsinh Vaghela said the BJP's convincing victory in Gujarat could lead to it using the same Hindu fundamentalist platform in a string of upcoming state elections and the 2004 national polls, irreparably wrecking India's secular fabric.
"India will become a Hindu republic within two years," Mr Praveen Togadia of the World Hindu Council, a close BJP ally, confidently told a private television news channel.
The council that campaigned vigorously on an anti-Islamic platform talked chillingly of a "final settlement" of the Muslim problem after Gujarat's riots, that had frightening echoes of ethnic cleansing campaigns in other parts of the world. "Now is the time for direct action to assert the Hindu identity - in word and deed," Mr Togadia, a reputed cancer surgeon, had declared.
The Muslims had to be taught a lesson, he said, a sentiment he repeated frequently during campaigning.
Reports from Ahmedabad said that with the BJP's return to power, Muslims across the state feared the worst. The Indian Express declared that about 150 Muslims from the city's worst riot-affected area of Naroda had either moved out of the state or to Muslim neighbourhoods for greater safety.
"Who wants to stay here with the same government which killed us," Hanif Mohammad, who lost five family members in the riots, told the paper.
In his election speeches Mr Modi claimed that only he could protect Gujarat's 50 million people from neighbouring Islamic Pakistan and Muslim militants. Under Mr Modi's administration school textbooks declare that Hitler lent "dignity and prestige to the German government by establishing a strong administrative set up". The Class 10 social studies book - compulsory reading for 15-year-olds - also declares that Hitler "adopted a policy of opposition towards the Jewish people and advocated supremacy of the German race".
"The people of Gujarat have given a verdict in our favour. I thank them for this," said Mr Modi (52), who defeated his Congress party rival by 75,000 votes in the Maninagar constituency in Ahmedabad. "This victory is a defeat for pseudo-secularists," added Mr Modi, who has become a conquering hero for his party, which heads the federal coalition but has suffered a series of defeats in state elections, making Gujarat the only province where it has sole control.
Political control of states is vital to India's 24-member BJP-led central government that comprises regional parties. Provincial parties have to ensure that they retain control of their home states to remain in power at the centre.
Large crowds, meanwhile, gathered at the BJP offices in the capital New Delhi to celebrate the victory by cheering, setting off firecrackers and dancing in the streets waving the party's green-and-saffron flags, marked with the lotus symbol.
Gujarat's newly-elected legislators meet today to confirm Mr Modi as their chief minister.
