Partying while Gujarat Burned.(World Affairs; POINT OF VIEW)(India)(Cover story)

Byline: Tarun J. Tejpal; Tejpal is editor in chief of Tehelka magazine, based in New Delhi.

A serious schism between India's 900 million Hindus and 150 million Muslims would tear it apart.

Making trouble in India is easy. The country is mined with multiple identities: caste, community, religion, language, class, ethnicity. Mismanaging one can set off an uproar, and politicians of every stripe repeatedly tease up trouble by playing with identity as suits the moment. The result is continual protests, riots, violence, tragedy and farce.

There are times when the tragedy is particularly gory -- as during the Gujarat riots of 2002, which, after someone set fire to a train carrying Hindu travelers in a town named Godhra, killing 59, saw the massacre and rape of more than 2,000 Muslims by Hindu zealots. On Oct. 25, Tehelka, the magazine I edit, broke a five-month-long investigation into the bloodshed. Wielding two spycams, Tehelka reporter Ashish Khetan had trawled his way through the entrails of the Sangh Parivar -- a right-wing Hindu umbrella group that includes the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which ruled India between 1999 and 2004. Khetan managed to make contact with all kinds of Sangh men, including elected legislators, whose testimonies conclusively established that the 2002 killings had been planned, had enjoyed the sanction of the state and its chief minister, Narendra Modi, as well as the collusion of the police. Later on, the process of justice had been effectively manipulated to keep those responsible out of jail.

The evidence was graphic. Mass murderers appeared on camera, describing how they killed, why they killed and who helped them kill. One man described yanking a fetus out of a pregnant woman's womb; another of dicing the limbs of a former Congress M.P., Ahsan Jafri. Another explained how bombs were manufactured and arms procured. These are tales from hell -- accounts of group killings and burnings, with specific details, one account corroborating the next.

So much for the tragedy. As is typical in Indian public life, the farce followed almost immediately. The BJP accused the staff of Tehelka of being Congress agents. Then, bizarrely, Congress made the opposite claim: that Tehelka was working for the BJP. One side said we were denigrating Modi; the other, that we were building him up as an anti-Muslim hero. In the process, India's two largest political parties seemed to completely lose sight of what was right and what was wrong. Rather than step in, dismiss the state government and impose central rule, as many advocated, the Congress government in New Delhi did nothing. No strong statements were issued; no inquiry was announced. It was left to civil society to explode in a rage, filing lawsuits and holding protests.

Sixty ...