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FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Gujarat is the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi. At the center from where he led India's independence movement in the early 20th century, school children sing about non violence and peace.
Gujarat has been anything but peaceful in recent weeks. Last February, a train was set ablaze by a group of Muslims in the village of Godhra. Stories vary on what provoked the incident but in the end, 58 Hindus, most of them women and children, were burned alive. The train was carrying Hindu activists returning from the site of a long-simmering dispute over ground claimed as sacred both by Hindus and Muslims.
The train attack sparked some of the worst religious violence seen in India since it was partitioned in 1947 by the departing British. An estimated half million people died. Muslims moving to the newly-created Pakistan, Hindus going the other way to a newly-independent, officially secular India. Many Muslims remained in India. They form a 12 percent minority.
Today in Ahmedabad, the Gujarat state capital, more than 110,000 of the city's Muslim minority have fled into makeshift refugee camps. They tell stories of rape, murder, and torched homes.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Tell us, where can we go? They took our Koran, threw it in the street, and pissed on it. They tell us to get out of this country. We were born here, our men fought for this country, where can we go?
DE SAM LAZARO: A few miles away, a Hindu family mourns the loss of their son and brother, killed by a Muslim gang. He was a youth activist for the world Hindu council, a Hindu nationalist group. He was a martyr for the country -- the cause, they say -- and that cause will continue.
What sparked the violence is 800 miles away in Ayodhya. For Hindu nationalists this 16th-century mosque symbolized Muslim domination of their land. India is the birthplace of Hinduism, approximately 2,500 years ago. Islam first came to south Asia around the 12th century, and much of the region came under the rule of the Muslim Mogul empire at about the time this mosque was built.
Hindu nationalists insist the Moguls destroyed a Hindu temple to build the mosque and that the site was the birthplace of the Hindu deity Ram. In 1992, a Hindu crowd tore down the mosque. Hundreds died in violence that followed across the subcontinent.
The BJP -- or India People's Party -- allied with nationalist Hindu groups, rode the issue to electoral success. It campaigned to build a new Ram temple. In 1999, the BJP came to power with coalition partners who forced moderation. The government now says the courts should decide the matter.
As India's Supreme Court grapples with the issue, Hindu forces have been active, building the temple, they say, just waiting to erect it. Not far from the disputed site, hundreds of pillars and columns have already been carved. Visitors come to admire the stone work, and they chip in a few rupees for the temple project.
Today, the dozens of their number who perished in the Gohdra train incident have been called martyrs. Their deaths have sparked retribution against Muslims on a scale Police Commissioner P.C. Pande says he's never witnessed.
P.C. PANDE (Police Commissioner): We've dealt with several such situations -- it's not the first time. But you don't expect people to come out in the hundreds of thousands.
DE SAM LAZARO: By the time Army troops arrived, almost every Muslim-owned business in Gujarat was destroyed. The official death toll had exceeded 800 people, most of them Muslims. The toll is likely in the thousands. Many victims, like the relatives of 14 year-old Naved, have never been found.
NAVED (through voice of translator): My mother, my father, brother, sister, plus an aunty and her family. We all lived together. On February 28, our house was burned. My hands and legs were burned. I ran to my employer who took me to the hospital.
DE SAM LAZARO: An uncle who lives in south India has offered to take him in, Naved says, when it is safe. It will be a while.
Gujarat has been anything but peaceful in recent weeks. Last February, a train was set ablaze by a group of Muslims in the village of Godhra. Stories vary on what provoked the incident but in the end, 58 Hindus, most of them women and children, were burned alive. The train was carrying Hindu activists returning from the site of a long-simmering dispute over ground claimed as sacred both by Hindus and Muslims.
The train attack sparked some of the worst religious violence seen in India since it was partitioned in 1947 by the departing British. An estimated half million people died. Muslims moving to the newly-created Pakistan, Hindus going the other way to a newly-independent, officially secular India. Many Muslims remained in India. They form a 12 percent minority.Today in Ahmedabad, the Gujarat state capital, more than 110,000 of the city's Muslim minority have fled into makeshift refugee camps. They tell stories of rape, murder, and torched homes.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Tell us, where can we go? They took our Koran, threw it in the street, and pissed on it. They tell us to get out of this country. We were born here, our men fought for this country, where can we go?
DE SAM LAZARO: A few miles away, a Hindu family mourns the loss of their son and brother, killed by a Muslim gang. He was a youth activist for the world Hindu council, a Hindu nationalist group. He was a martyr for the country -- the cause, they say -- and that cause will continue.What sparked the violence is 800 miles away in Ayodhya. For Hindu nationalists this 16th-century mosque symbolized Muslim domination of their land. India is the birthplace of Hinduism, approximately 2,500 years ago. Islam first came to south Asia around the 12th century, and much of the region came under the rule of the Muslim Mogul empire at about the time this mosque was built.
Hindu nationalists insist the Moguls destroyed a Hindu temple to build the mosque and that the site was the birthplace of the Hindu deity Ram. In 1992, a Hindu crowd tore down the mosque. Hundreds died in violence that followed across the subcontinent.The BJP -- or India People's Party -- allied with nationalist Hindu groups, rode the issue to electoral success. It campaigned to build a new Ram temple. In 1999, the BJP came to power with coalition partners who forced moderation. The government now says the courts should decide the matter.
As India's Supreme Court grapples with the issue, Hindu forces have been active, building the temple, they say, just waiting to erect it. Not far from the disputed site, hundreds of pillars and columns have already been carved. Visitors come to admire the stone work, and they chip in a few rupees for the temple project.
Today, the dozens of their number who perished in the Gohdra train incident have been called martyrs. Their deaths have sparked retribution against Muslims on a scale Police Commissioner P.C. Pande says he's never witnessed. P.C. PANDE (Police Commissioner): We've dealt with several such situations -- it's not the first time. But you don't expect people to come out in the hundreds of thousands.
DE SAM LAZARO: By the time Army troops arrived, almost every Muslim-owned business in Gujarat was destroyed. The official death toll had exceeded 800 people, most of them Muslims. The toll is likely in the thousands. Many victims, like the relatives of 14 year-old Naved, have never been found.
NAVED (through voice of translator): My mother, my father, brother, sister, plus an aunty and her family. We all lived together. On February 28, our house was burned. My hands and legs were burned. I ran to my employer who took me to the hospital.DE SAM LAZARO: An uncle who lives in south India has offered to take him in, Naved says, when it is safe. It will be a while.
Mr. VARADARAJAN: I think a statesmanlike attitude would have been to condemn both, to recognize both are acts of terrorism, both have to be condemned. To say that one incident justifies the other in any way reveals a complete moral and philosophical bankruptcy. 
PRAVEEN TOGADIA (World Hindu Council): Here in Gujarat, Hindus are victims of Islamic terrorism.
ABID SHAMSI (Retired English Professor): The voice of sanity is not heard. There is such a large scale and widespread rule of fanaticism where you can't go and talk reason.
Prof. SHAMSI: Yes, absolutely. And this time, it is going to be a long time. 
