AHMEDABAD: “How can we go back? That was once my home,” wept Waheeda Sheikh, pointing to a hastily built temple, whose construction will ensure that she, like thousands of other victims of an anti-Muslim pogrom that swept India’s Gujarat state in recent months, will continue to live in the camps that they have been staying in.

All over this industrial city in Gujarat, where the houses and shops of the once prosperous minority Muslim community stood, Hindu temples have sprung up with angry red idols in simple whitewashed structures with saffron flags waving atop.

It is amidst this dislocation and religious polarization that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of chief minister Narendra Modi now wants to hold a snap poll, confident of votes from approving Hindus who form the overwhelming majority in the state.

Few expect the wounds to heal in the next six months — the period of time after last week’s dissolution of assembly that, according to constitutional provisions, the elections must be held.

But ignoring advice to wait until the expiry of the assembly’s term in March next year, Modi dissolved the assembly on July 19.

India’s powerful Election Commission, a constitutional body, has the final say on when elections can be called and it is yet to pronounce on Modi’s move, which the main opposition Congress party says has been cynically called to capitalize on the communal polarization.

Abishek Singhvi, Congress party spokesman, said in New Delhi, that the “priority in Gujarat at the moment is not to call elections but to apply the healing touch and expedite rehabilitation.”

The BJP government in Gujarat under Modi has been held responsible by no less than the National Human Rights Commission, a statutory body, of encouraging the anti-Muslim pogrom, in which at least a thousand people were officially known to have been killed and more than 150,000 rendered homeless.

Calls for Modi’s dismissal were ignored by the BJP government at the centre mainly because of his standing in the party as a man who played a leading role in the demolition of the Babri Masjid, and helped propel the BJP to national power in 1998, displacing the avowedly secular Congress party.

Instead, the BJP decided that whether Modi should remain as chief minister or go is best left to the people to decide through a snap poll. “Elections are the best healer. The Congress party is running away from the elections,” said Arun Jaitley, a top BJP leader who insists that things have returned to “normalcy” in the state.

But everywhere in Ahmedabad there are signs of the brutality unleashed on the city in the days after Feb 27, not least the makeshift camps for Muslims driven from their homes and the temples that have been built on their property to ensure that they do not return.

Said Hanif Lakadwala, a human rights activist, “Things may be normal for Jaitley and his party, but thousands of people cannot return to their homes and are simply too terrified to take part in any election process.”

Laminated photographs circulated by the VHP of 11 women who were returning to their homes in the Janata Nagar area of the city from that fateful trip on the Sabarmati Express train from Ayodhya ensure that the Hindus do not forget Godhra.

But some Hindus are forgiving and see through the deliberate attempt to make political capital out of the tragedy. Said Sharad Mhatre, whose wife also died on the train, “I feel this is all politics — innocent people are dying. There is no punishment for crime in this country.”

Gayatri Panchal, 17, survived the train violence, in which her parents and two elder sisters died. Her house in Janata Nagar was attacked some time ago, she said, and the VHP had moved her to her present residence with the promise of a permanent one in the future.

At Wadali in Sabarkantha district, Veena Talkies, a cinema, is an unlikely refuge. Women pray in one of its three stories, prompting a community leader to remark that “Prayers are said in an unholy places these days.”

The BJP government clearly does not want to be seen providing assistance to Muslim refugees, especially at a time when it is trying to win an election with the support of the majority Hindus.

An economic and social boycott of Muslims, called by the VHP, is being heeded to in Ahmedabad and other parts of Gujarat, especially the rural areas.—Dawn/The InterPress News Services.