Muslims in the western state of Gujarat were still too frightened to leave their homes or return to those they fled, fearing more attacks from Hindus after five days of mob violence that claimed another 14 lives Sunday.
As the death toll rose to 499, the violence spread beyond the borders of Gujarat. Police said a Muslim vendor was stabbed to death on Sunday while followers of both faiths threw rocks at each other in Aligarh, a city with a history of Muslim-Hindu violence in the central state of Uttar Pradesh. Some 2,000 paramilitary troops were sent to the city and a curfew imposed to prevent further clashes.
Muslims began the wave of violence that has gripped Gujarat since last Wednesday, when a group of them attacked a trainload of Hindu nationalists and set it on fire. The 58 deaths provoked a retaliatory rampage by Hindus.
Most of those killed since then have been Muslims, many burned alive by vengeful Hindus. On Sunday, authorities said the violence was subsiding in Gujarat, although another 13 people died.
In one town, Deodhar, four Muslims were burned alive Sunday and police shot to death two of the Hindu crowd attacking them.
Rioting and looting occurred in three villages in the Kheda district, and police shot four people to death, while three others died in fights. Mobs also set fire to shops and trucks on a highway at Bhavnagar.
In Ahmadabad, the city of 3.5 million that saw most of the bloodshed, a curfew was lifted in some neighborhoods but many Muslims were still too frightened to leave their homes or return to those they had fled. Instead, they sent frantic text messages on their cellphones to friends and relatives.
``Need milk and vegetables. Have nothing for children to eat,'' read one message received by Ghulam Mohammad, who was hiding in his apartment in a Muslim section of the city.
The plea came from his friend Kamaluddin Lakhani but there was little Mohammad could do. He had no money, no gasoline, and was running out of food himself. He too was afraid to go out.
Elsewhere in Ahmadabad, the staff and students of the Indian Institute of Management, one of India's most prestigious universities, held a peace rally Sunday that was disrupted by slogan-shouting Hindu activists who burned placards.
``I cannot say the situation is normal, but the situation is returning to normalcy,'' said Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
``Deaths have come down in Ahmadabad. The government cannot be lenient with the rioters,'' he said in an interview with Star News TV.
He had been heavily criticized for sympathizing with the Hindu mobs earlier, and delaying effective police and army deployment.
Outside the city, which two days ago was blocked with burning trucks and Hindu mobs, tea stalls and small soda pop and cigarette stands had reopened. Children played cricket in open fields and villagers visited one another for their usual Sunday chats.
Police arrested two more people in connection with the train fire -- Mohammed Hussain Abdul Rahim Kalota, chairman of the Godhra municipality, and Shiraz Abdullah Jamesha, a local transporter. The arrests bring to 27 the number of suspects detained in the attack on the train.
``No one has the right to take the law into their hands,'' said Modi, the highest elected official of the state. ``These incidents should make our heads hang in shame.''
In Sardarpur, a village where 28 Muslims were killed by a mob of 4,500 Hindus, Hindu residents were reluctant to speak about the violence, and a dozen paramilitary soldiers patrolled deserted streets.
At the height of the violence, the mob set fire to a concrete house where the Muslims hid after fleeing their tin-roofed huts. They tossed in petrol bombs, burning to death six children, 15 women and five men. The remaining 150 Muslim villagers fled.
``I've been living here since 1962 and there have been no conflicts between Hindus and Muslims. I'm incredibly upset. We regret what has happened. But what's done is done,'' said Someshwar Pandya, 68, a retired Hindu social worker.
The violence is the worst in India since 1993, when 800 people were killed during Hindu-Muslim riots in Bombay. Outside Gujarat state, the country remained relatively calm.
The origins of the violence lie in a Hindu campaign to build a temple in the northern town of Ayodhya on the site of a 16th century mosque that was razed by Hindus in 1992. Most of the people killed in the train in Godhra were returning from Ayodhya.
The former mosque site is being guarded by thousands of police to keep out Hindu fundamentalists, led by the World Hindu Council, who have vowed to begin construction of the temple at the site on March 15.
Police have halted trains, blocked roads and sealed off the city, where only 550 hard-core Hindu activists of the Council now remain, police and council officials said Sunday. The rest of the 20,000 who had assembled there last week, helping carve stone pillars for the proposed temple, have left.
The Hindu Council president, Ashok Singhal, told reporters in the Indian capital, New Delhi, on Sunday that the program to start the construction on March 15 ``remains the same.''
``I want to appeal to the countrymen and the followers of my holy religion to maintain peace and brotherhood in this divine land,'' he said.
(China Daily March 4, 2002)
