AHMEDABAD, India - The 10-foot-high wall separating Muslims from Hindus in Juhapura, a suburb of Ahmedabad, is likely to be raised next week. Each time religious tensions threaten to boil over, a Muslim builder shores it up and adds another couple of feet.
Anxiety is rippling through the Muslim community in the western state of Gujarat, after a recent election landslide for hard-line nationalists of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Muslims bore the brunt when religious violence erupted last spring, killing more than 1,000 people.
‘‘What will stop them now? Now they can get away with anything,’’ Aziz Gandhi, a Muslim political activist, referring to Hindu militants.
** Muslims here have reason to be nervous. The election campaign masterminded by Gujarat’s chief minister, Narendra Modi, was fought over an aggressive call for Hindutava - or chauvinistic Hindu supremacy. **
On the surface, Modi’s campaign focused on Islamic terrorism, especially in Pakistan, but it covertly targeted Muslims living in Gujarat. BJP officials suggested that the state’s Muslim minority of 5 million, or 10 percent of the state’s population, should consider leaving India for Pakistan.
The strategy worked: The BJP, which also controls India’s national governing coalition, captured 126 of a total of 182 seats in the state assembly of Gujarat.
The results have heightened a sense of insecurity among Muslims in Gujarat, the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi, seen as the father of modern India.
Six months after the riots, in which Hindu mobs went on a rampage, killing, looting, raping, and burning, the election verdict was yet another trauma. In one way or another, the state’s entire Muslim population was affected by the violence, which was sparked in February when a Muslim mob burned to death 59 Hindus traveling on a train in Godhra, 200 miles from Ahmedabad.
Picking up the threads has not been easy. Positions in both communities have hardened and the political, social, and economic polarization is complete.
The schism between the two groups is so severe that in some areas, Muslims and Hindus stood in separate lines on Election Day.
‘‘There is no collective cross-communal thinking any more. It’s us' versus them’ now,’’ said Achyut Yagnik, a political analyst who runs a think tank called Setu. ‘‘That is why Modi’s populist right-wing strategy was as brilliant as it was diabolical.’’
**It’s not unusual here to find Muslim men and women who resort to hiding their identities while working in or traveling to Hindu localities. **
Parvin Iqbal Bano, a computer operator, says that outside of her neighborhood she adopts the more Hindu-sounding name of Pravin. She says she starts her day by listening to the radio and watching local television for alerts about any communal tension the previous night.
When she ventures out, she wears a bindi, the distinctive mark worn by Hindu married women, on her forehead and she dresses in a sari. Although her immediate acquaintances know of her religion, she hides it from everybody else.
‘‘There is just too much of a risk,’’ Bano said. ‘‘I know all Hindus are not alike just as all Muslims are not alike. But my mother really worries about me when I leave the house so I take precautions.’’
In another area, a driver for a transport company who did not want to be fully identified said he uses the name Raj rather than his own Muslim name, Siraj. And Akhil Paul, a Christian, insists that his wife wear a cross around her neck while working ‘‘out there.’’
Like other Muslim parents after the spring riots, Mallik Mohammed Ghazni moved his 3-year-old daughter from a ‘‘mixed’’ nursery school in Ravinagar to one run by a Muslim volunteer organization in Juhapura.
He said that during the clashes, teachers had been asked by Hindu protesters to give a list of Muslim children studying there. The request was refused.
‘‘Things are better now, but I am happier that my daughter continues to learn among Muslims,’’ Ghazni said. ‘‘There is safety in being with your own. Had a mob attacked her old school, they wouldn’t have been able to protect her.’’
Of particular concern now is what the election results mean for the future of India’s declared secular status. Liberal commentators are debating whether the BJP will follow Modi’s strategy of Hindu revivalism in the 10 states that go to the polls next year and in general elections scheduled for 2004.
** ‘‘This is only the beginning,’’ said Haresh Bhatt, the BJP candidate from Godhra and a former member of the World Hindu Council, whose aim is to make India a Hindu state.
‘‘Don’t forget Gujarat is the laboratory of Hindutava,’’ he said. ‘‘The experiment will be done in phases - the first phase has been successful and now we move onto the next phase.’’ **