AHMEDABAD, 8 December 2002 — All morning Friday, 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 died when a Hindu mob tore through their streets during a murderous wave of sectarian blood-letting which this year ripped across India’s western state of Gujarat like a forest fire.

In Fatima’s neighborhood alone — a near-slum called Naroda in eastern Ahmedabad — nearly 100 people were killed. Statewide, human rights groups estimate the death toll at around 2,000, making it one of the bloodiest episodes in a long chain of communal violence to blight India.

The women mourned Friday because it was a special Muslim festival, and yet so many of their own were no longer with them. “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.”

But they grieved against another backdrop. It was also the anniversary of a notorious 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 zealots armed with spades and iron bars tore down the 16th century Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. On Friday, fearful of violence, India’s security forces flooded the streets around flashpoints.

To the perpetrators, the destruction of the mosque was an act of liberation: They believe the mosque was built on the site of the birthplace of the Hindu deity Rama. They have been seeking to build a temple in its place ever since, although the courts have so far blocked this.

But it was also the culmination of a six-year rabble-rousing campaign by hard-line Hindu nationalists who march under the umbrella if the Rashtriyta Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or National Volunteer Corps.

Among the members of the RSS’ so-called “family” of organizations is the BJP, the party that leads India’s coalition government under the relatively moderate Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. And one of the chief instigators of the Ayodhya campaign was Lal Krishna Advani, who — despite calls for him to be prosecuted over the affair — has since risen to become deputy prime minister.

Many of India’s Muslims — who form 12 percent of India’s one billion population — see the Ayodhya incident as a vital sign of the rise of virulent anti-Muslim nationalism. The spark that led to the Gujarat massacres this spring came when a Muslim mob set fire to a train carrying Hindu activists back from a trip to Ayodhya, killing 58.

On Friday, India held its breathe amid fears that the anniversary would bring another bout of bloodshed.

The security forces were particularly thick on the ground in Gujarat, which is bracing for next week’s state elections — a knuckle-fight between the opposition Congress party and the BJP, led by an outspoken Hindu nationalist hard-liner, Narendra Modi.

The anti-Muslim rhetoric of Modi, currently Gujarat’s chief minister, is drawing appreciative crowds. His task is made easier by Islamist militancy — from Al- Qaeda, to Kashmiri separatists — and a spate of recent attacks on temples, including in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar where 30 died in September.

But it is reopening the strife between Gujarat’s Hindus and Muslims, whose wounds are still raw after this years’ bloodbath. There are still many unsettled scores in the 50 million strong state — 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.

Nor is it the only case of unsettled scores. After the mosque’s destruction in Ayodhya in 1992, there was another explosion of violence, mostly in Bombay, where an estimated 1,788 people were killed. Evidence abounds that they were — like the attacks on Muslims in Gujarat — both organized and conducted with official connivance.

Amnesty International Friday issued a statement pointing out that so far no one has been brought to justice, even though an official commission of inquiry identified 31 police officers as responsible for killings, negligence and rioting. “Ten years of apparent impunity sets a chilling precedent for those seeking justice after this year’s atrocious violence in Gujarat,” said Amnesty’s Richard Bunting. (The Independent)