INDIA: Terrified Muslims breathed easy in western India's Gujarat state last evening after tight security in the communally sensitive region prevented another sectarian flare-up after two Islamic gunmen killed 27 devotees at a Hindu temple earlier this week.
Muslim leaders put up banners declaring that they deplored Tuesday's attack on the Akshardham temple in Gujarat's capital Gandhinagar, adjoining the state's largest city Ahemdabad, while human rights activists toured sensitive neighbourhoods to ensure calm.
"By deploying the army and additional police and paramilitary units, the authorities had shown that they can control the communal situation if they desire," cloth merchant Mr Mohammad Bhai Mansuri said in Ahmedabad. More than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, died in extended sectarian clashes there earlier this year.
"The spark of hatred was extinguished earlier and the blood letting completed," he added in the Muslim Khas bazaar quarter.
Human rights activists and the opposition claim the riots were encouraged by the state's Hindu nationalist government after a trainload of 58 Hindu pilgrims were torched by a Muslim mob in February. The bazaar, in the heart of the walled city area, was ravaged by marauding Hindu mobs who killed scores of Muslims and burnt their homes and businesses in the pogrom which began in February and ended in May.
Tension escalated again yesterday in Gujarat following the nationwide general strike called by the extremist Hindu World Council to protest against the attack by two teenage Muslim gunmen on the Akshardham temple which Indian officials claim were backed by neighbouring Pakistan. The assailants were shot dead early on Wednesday by commandos after a 15-hour firefight in which three security forces personnel also died and about 75 people were injured.
The council, closely linked to the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party of the prime minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, wants India to declare war on Pakistan.
Its general secretary, Mr Pravin Togadia, said the temple attack was tantamount to a "war" between Hinduism and militant Islam and necessitated a "befitting reply".
He criticised Mr Vajpayee's supine attitude towards Pakistan, despite similar suicide attacks such as one on the Indian parliament last December which brought the nuclear rivals to the brink of war.
Meanwhile, all schools, shops and offices were shut in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar, while public transport ground to a halt during the day-long strike which passed off relatively peacefully. The strike was partially successful in India's financial capital Bombay and smaller urban centres controlled by Hindu nationalist parties.
Two Muslim men, however, were stabbed by Hindu attackers in separate incidents in the diamond-cutting town of Surat in southern Gujarat. One of them was a shopkeeper who refused to shut his establishment and the second a municipal employee.
In the capital Delhi, police used water cannon to disperse thousands of people shouting anti-Pakistan slogans at a protest rally against Gujarat's temple killings. The activists from Mr Vajpayee's BJP party tried forcing their way inside the Pakistan High Commission, but were blocked by riot police.
"Our patience is running out. One after another, terrorist incidents are taking place," senior BJP leader Mr Vijay Kumar Malhotra said. The US should declare Pakistan a terrorist state so that these incidents could end, he added.