NEW DELHI, 23 April — Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s “flirtation” with the Hindutva agenda, has put the country’s “secular” credentials at risk, paralyzed the parliamentary proceedings and has spelled no respite for the Gujarati Muslims.

Vajpayee, long touted as the moderate face of the Hindu revivalist movement, has in recent weeks drifted into the hard-line camp, raising fears he is doing the bidding of the far-right, analysts said yesterday.

As hundreds have died in attacks on Muslims in the western state of Gujarat, Vajpayee and his Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have turned their attention instead to their own survival, working to please their hard-line Hindu base, said Balveer Arora, a political science professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University. “It’s very worrying,” he said.

Violence has festered in Gujarat, one of the few states still controlled by the BJP, where another 50 people died in communal-linked violence since Sunday, according to police. The state’s chief minister, Narendra Modi, has been accused of conniving with right-wing Hindus who mounted revenge attacks on the Muslim minority after a supposedly Muslim mob attacked a train carrying Hindu activists on Feb. 27.

More than 900 people have been killed in the violence, according to official figures. But humanitarian organizations put the death toll at least twice as high.

Some 100,000 Muslims who have lost their homes and businesses also languish in relief camps, which according to Amnesty International often lack basic sanitation and medical facilities.

The Gujarat riots, the deadliest Hindu-Muslim violence in a decade, have tarnished the image abroad of India, which has billed itself as a multi-ethnic democracy since its independence in 1947, diplomats note.

The European Union plans to raise the Gujarat violence with the government this week, diplomats said. Opposition parties have also been angrily demanding debate on the issue, paralyzing Parliament for days. When Vajpayee took power in 1999, Western governments viewed him as the moderate face of a government that includes ministers with close ties to extremist Hindu outfits. But since its defeat in February provincial elections in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP has appeared to become more radical in both its rhetoric and actions.

On March 26, the central government pushed through a tough anti-terrorism law, which critics say can easily be used to target political opponents and religious minorities. Vajpayee himself caused a furor among the press and opposition April 12, when he suggested to a BJP gathering in Goa that Muslims bore much of the blame for violence in India. “We should not forget how it all began,” Vajpayee said of the Gujarat riots. “Who started the fire?”

“Hindus stay in millions but never hurt others’ religious feelings. But wherever Muslims are, they do not want to stay peacefully,” Vajpayee said.

Vajpayee insisted later he was taken out of context and was denouncing only militant Muslims.

But the premier also refused to accept Modi’s resignation, with the BJP asking the controversial chief minister instead to seek a new mandate in early elections.

The weekly magazine Outlook featured on its cover what it called, “a ‘new’ Vajpayee,” who “shelves his moderate image and refuses to sack Modi.”

Former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram called on Vajpayee to “tender an unqualified apology for defaming 120 million people who have as much right to live in this country as he and I have.”

“Has Vajpayee seen the leaflets being circulated in Gujarat calling for an economic boycott of Muslims? Does he know that Muslims are being driven out of mixed neighborhoods and pushed into ghettos?” Chidambaram wrote in India Today.

A columnist for the magazine, Tavleen Singh, said most Hindus were “shamed ... not just by the sickening violence but that it appears to have occurred with the approval of the state government.”

“Had Vajpayee the courage to resign and make it clear to his party that he was not with them when they insisted Modi was a hero and not a repellent villain, he would have returned from Goa as India’s leader.

“Instead, he has come back as a pathetic foot soldier, a camp follower who marches even under banners he does not believe in”.