Narendra Modi, the more political hero or the villain of India

Ahmedabad (India), February 28, 2008. - With more than 1,000 dead just six years ago, the religious clashes in 2002 in western India's Gujarat communal carnage caused the worst in recent decades and had as one of its main protagonists to then and now head of regional government, Narendra Modi.
Modi, reelected in December 2007 with an undisputed majority, has been accused of in the best case, a blind eye to the killing of Muslims, in which members of his government related items.
Carry the stigma of religious persecution against minorities, Modi in 2005 suffered the humiliation of seeing how the United States withdrew the entry visa into the country.
But suspicion falling on his rule on alleged violations of human rights have not weakened the professed admiration among his countrymen, who reiterated his confidence in the leader giving their votes and a new majority in the chamber.
Born in 1950 in the midst of a middle class family, Modi, a vegetarian meat consumption considered a waste of resources, he studied political science and joined radical formation Hindu Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
His rise in militancy boxes Conservative Party Bharatiya Janata Party-RSS-was akin to lightning, and soon became, in 2001 and a year before the riots that catapulted him to the "known" world, the regional general secretary in order to reorganize the training and attack power.
The trigger for those riots was the death of 58 Hindu pilgrims in the town of Godhra Gujarati in March 2002, when the train they were traveling stopped by a barricade of stones placed on the track and, moments later, caught fire.
Modi described the act as a "violent act of terrorism planned by one community against another," a clear accusation against Muslims that could spur the radical Hindus took to the streets.
With more than 1,000 deaths in the two months of unrest that followed these events, Modi could not ever shake off the stigma of the killings to the outside, but his popularity remains intact for most of his countrymen.
The reason is the economic situation in Gujarat, perhaps the strongest region of India, with an average annual growth exceeding 10 percent and a "change from the roots" that agricultural production has quadrupled and has made ​​the region a leader in power generation.
And the Modi Government has implemented a recipe for investment in infrastructure as a driver of economic growth that has paid off in the two times that has been reelected since (2002 and 2007), with the slogan "Vibrant Gujarat".
According to his biographers institutional, Modi is a visionary and a "pan-Indian image popular leader," passionate, young, energetic, writer, an astute politician, a speaker and a sharp negotiator who has earned "love and affection the masses. "
"I am eternally proud of being human and Hindu. Every time I feel I am large, extensive, I am sindhu (ethnicity of the area), "he wrote.
But some, less prone to visionary Modi, has been engaged to compile other compositions: the statements he made ​​during the ethnic slaughter, such as: "every action (in reference to fire the train) has an equal and opposite reaction."

Gujarat Muslims look forward six years after the massacre

Ahmedabad (India), February 27, 2008. - In most segregated neighborhoods because of their religion, Muslims in the Indian region of Gujarat in the west, trying to get ahead and forget the killing of just six years ago, in which over a thousand people died.
In the thriving, bustling city of Ahmedabad, the largest in the region, there are hardly any traces of the wave of extremist violence that swept Gujarat, but a few blackened walls and a clear predominance in Hindu areas where there used to live together.
But the procession goes inside. "Before, neighborhoods and other Hindu domination of Muslim domination. But after the events of 2002, this issue, without being entirely an 'apartheid', has deteriorated, "said Somnath Vatsa Efe, a lawyer from Ahmedabad who has defended victims of the killings.
These began as a reaction to fire, according to Hindu extremists, led by Muslims on a train crowded with pilgrims ("karsevaks") on February 27, 2002, an event in which 58 people were killed, including women and children .
Within hours, Muslims in different cities suffered the attacks of radical Hindu groups who raped women, burned houses, damaged mosques, killing all who stood before them.
After these events, thousands of Muslims in Gujarat had to find foster homes, until their own aid associations bought land to build new neighborhoods who have devoted a de facto separation in the region.
One of the new neighborhoods is Juhapura, a crowd of 300,000 people and newly built homes that has been called, without euphemism, as the largest Muslim ghetto in Gujarat, including complaints of neglect of its residents.
"The country did not do anything for them then and today the situation remains worrying Vatsa attorney-tops. To ensure more interaction between Muslims and Hindus government must develop public programs. "
Indian Muslims, about 140 million, up 13.4 percent of the population but hold only 5 percent of government jobs in government institutions and their access to education remains very poor.
Furthermore, the faithful suffer an image problem dating from the time of independence and partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan (1947), when most of the Muslim middle classes chose to move on to Pakistani soil.
Muslims who stayed in India belonged mostly to the lower social strata, less training and more atavistic behavior, which continued to hinder their integration into the new independent company.
Cowards, according to gossip, and loyal to Pakistan Pakistan as Indian-Muslims in India have also had to endure growing accusations of complicity with terrorism after the emergence of fundamentalist discourse and the constant attacks by radical groups the subcontinent.
"Muslims are overwhelmed ... We prefer a nonviolent approach, which has an impact on our community. There are hardly any Muslims in the government and our solution must be education. Especially for women, "said Efe Professor JS Bandukwala, whose house burned during the riots in Gujarat.
These, the worst slaughter of the last decades, put on the lips of many analysts, the words "genocide" and "pogrom", due to inaction by the security forces and the regional government, then and now led by the conservative Narendra Modi.
India is a country built on a secular constitution and a salad of religions and cultures, hence, in the words of journalist Tarun Tejpal, the events in Gujarat was not only a "national shame", but "the biggest slap in the face the idea of India ".
Six years after the "slap", the citizens of the vibrant Ahmedabad pass, buy and sell on the streets working for mixed and indistinct, until, by evening, they return to their neighborhoods turned into Hindus and Muslims.