INDIA: Both houses of India's parliament were adjourned yesterday following an uproar over sectarian clashes in western Gujarat state in which 665 people have been killed.
Agitated Opposition MPs stormed the well of the Houses, demanding the resignation of the Federal Home Minister, Mr Lal Krishna Advani, and the Gujarat government for failing to control five days of clashes between Hindus and Muslims.
The communal violence erupted last week after a Muslim mob burned a train with 58 Hindu activists on board in Gujarat. The remaining 600-odd, mainly Muslims, died in reprisals at the hands of Hindu mobs across Gujarat but mostly in its largest city Ahmedabad.
The train was carrying activists from the northern town of Ayodhya, where Hindu extremists have been rallying to build a temple at the site of a mosque razed in 1992 believing it to be the exact birth spot of their god, Lord Ram. The mosque's demolition led to nationwide Hindu-Muslim clashes in which over 2,000 people died, the majority in India's commercial capital Bombay in the west.
"If you cannot safeguard the lives of the people Mr Home Minister, you have no moral authority to stay in office," senior Congress party leader, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, said in the Rajya Sabha or Upper House of parliament. There is no doubt that the Gujarat government failed to protect the lives and property of the (Muslim) minorities, he added.
Politicians, activists and the media have accused the federal and state Hindu nationalist-led governments of not taking timely action to counter the bloody Hindu backlash. "You are accountable to the people of the country and not to only one \ section," Mr Mukherjee declared.
Gujarat Chief Minister, Mr Narinder Modi, explained away the violence by declaring that any action had an opposition and equal reaction while his senior state police officials helplessly admitted that their ineffective Hindu-majority police force came from the same "social milieu" as the rioters.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh police used batons to disperse nearly 2,000 radical Muslims who burned an Indian flag and chanted slogans in the capital Dhaka during a street protest against the Gujarat riots. News reports said police stopped the protesters from marching on the Indian High Commission, but made no arrests. The Bangladeshi had deployed hundreds of policemen during the rioting in Gujarat to prevent any violence.
The Booker Prize winner, Arundhati Roy, was released from Delhi's Tihar jail yesterday after serving a symbolic one-day internment and paying the 2,000 rupees (€47)fine imposed by India's Supreme Court for criminal contempt over a campaign to halt the building of a controversial dam.
