NEW DELHI/AHMEDABAD, 7 May — India’s ruling Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) yesterday backed an opposition parliamentary motion expressing anguish over deadly religious violence in Gujarat state to avoid the embarrassment of losing a vote on the issue.

The government also accused Pakistan of trying to foment the violence — the worst religious strife in a decade — although Pakistan dismissed the charge.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, whose BJP is accused of turning a blind eye to the sectarian violence, told Parliament it was time to end political bickering and work for national reconciliation.

"Let us sit down together and take decisions together. This was a bad dream, a nightmare, let us ensure the country will never again see this kind of thing happen," he said in the upper house of Parliament, which unanimously adopted the opposition motion calling for tough central action in Gujarat.

Vajpayee promised to take steps to curb riots in Gujarat, but rejected opposition demands to sack the state’s chief minister.

The ruling coalition lacks an upper house majority and faced certain defeat if the motion had gone to a vote. Last week, the BJP defeated an opposition censure motion in the lower house condemning its failure to stem the violence in Gujarat.

A loss in the upper house would not have brought down the government, but would have been a grave embarrassment.

More than 900 people, mostly Muslims, have died since Hindu mobs went on a rampage across Gujarat after 59 Hindus were burned in a train in late February. Violence has rocked Gujarat since then. Yesterday, troops patrolled the old quarter of Ahmedabad, which has borne the brunt of the two-month-old communal violence.

"The city is calm, as violence-hit areas have been brought under curfew," a police officer said. Two factory workers were lynched on Ahmedabad’s outskirts yesterday, a police officer said. He said the dead men had not yet been identified.

A security adviser drafted in to help end violence in Gujarat has pledged to bring greater professionalism to a police force widely accused of turning a blind eye to Hindu mobs killing Muslims. K.P.S. Gill outlined steps to improve the force through training and by revamping the intelligence network.

"Police training from the constable upward is a long-term need. Because ultimately it is that trained manpower which has to handle the situation," he said.

"Revenge is wrong, revenge is barbaric and against civilization," Home Minister L.K. Advani said in the upper house, which debated the situation in Gujarat for about 18 hours, spread over three days.

The religious violence in Gujarat has already exposed deep rifts in Vajpayee’s 19-party coalition, many of whose members are deeply uneasy over the BJP’s links with hard-line Hindu groups.

Opposition groups, who accuse the BJP of a deep-seated bias against the country’s 120 million minority Muslims, said the government had compromised India’s secular foundations by failing to protect the lives of minorities. More than 100,000 people, mainly Muslims, are sheltered in relief camps in Gujarat. Many have lost their homes to arson attacks or are too terrified to return for fear of being targeted by their Hindu neighbors, relief workers say.

"The simple thing is that people of Gujarat want to live in peace, can this government guarantee that?" asked Shankar Roy Chowdhury, a former chief of the army who is now a member of the upper house of Parliament.