NO school bus stops here to pick up children. No postman comes here to deliver letters by name. It is no longer on the beat of the media. Rioting makes news, not the absence of it; relief or rehabilitation is a mundane story. Even after four months of carnage, thousands of victims in Gujarat have no home, no hearth and no work. Refugee camps, where they took shelter when their houses were destroyed or burnt in broad daylight, are being shut. Some have tried to go back to the places where they lived to rebuild their tenements and lives. But the hostile neighbourhood has forced them to return. They cannot stay on where they are today even in unhygienic conditions. The government says that its "work" is over. What are the states for if they cannot look after the people who are ruined due to government's failure to protect them?

The victims have no place to go. They feel helpless and abandoned. Yet the prime minister had promised them ample compensation and quick rehabilitation. They have received some money as a grant. But it is too small to be considered compensation and too meagre to help them make a beginning. Are they victims of prejudice or politics or both? They have come to believe that they are the sacrificial lambs state chief minister Narendra Modi used to polarise the society. On this premise he seems determined to go to the polls in September or October, six months ahead of schedule. The BJP, his party, expects to reap the harvest from the poisonous seeds Modi has sown.

"If it is a question of vote, please disfranchise us," many inmates of refugee camps say. This is probably the strongest denunciation of a

system, which claims to be democratic and secular. Muslims constitute 10 to 12 per cent of the electorate in Gujarat. Still the BJP insists on playing the Hindu card.

The elections are some months away. The problem of victims is immediate; how do they pick up the thread and from where? They would like to go back to the shops they had and to the houses where they and their forefathers lived. But many in the majority community do not want it. The administration could help but quite a bit of it is contaminated. And at the helm of affairs is Modi who is far from repentant. His new antic is to open a school of ahimsa (non-violence)!

To turn the tide flowing in favour of the Congress was the task

entrusted to him when he was sent to Ahmedabad from Delhi where he was the BJP's general secretary. Being an RSS pracharak, he had learnt only one lesson: how to play on the imaginary fears of Hindus against Muslims to communalise the society. He would have created a Godhra train incident if it had not happened. The tragedy is that some Muslims played into his hands. Modi probably knows that

the Gujaratis would one day realise what harm he has done to their economy and their image. But that will take time. At present, he wants to cash in on the atmosphere of prejudice, suspicion and fear he has built.

This can be well imagined from a letter that a Muslim gentleman has written to me: "Not long ago, I would walk up to the nearby post office to send my letters and pick up fresh fruits and vegetables on my way back. I liked the leisurely talk with the Hindu vendors. Now my servant does all that. I am afraid to go out even in a car. I prefer to stay at home. But that is not life."

Many Muslims have begun to migrate to other states. Some of them, who had come from UP in the

wake of the Babri masjid's demolition, have gone back. But the Vishwa Hindu Parishad is trying to spoil the atmosphere by reneging on its earlier promise. It has refused to accept even the court's verdict on the mandir-masjid controversy. The prime minister's statement that the BJP had never deviated from the mandir agenda had created confusion. But the BJP's reiteration to honour the court's decision has

saved the situation.

So have the NGOs working in Gujarat. They are the only rays of hope in an otherwise murky scenario. All of them are Hindus. They have been looking after the refugee camps from day one. Hindus have contributed lakhs of rupees and some of their organisations have adopted the Muslim villages, razed to the ground during the riots. Indeed, all this has given the victims a feeling that they are part of the Indian nation.

Yet Hindu fundamentalists have not relented in any way. They had planned a series of rath yatras in the next few days. The Muslims had responded positively when they cancelled the Muharram celebrations. But the sponsors of

rath yatras were adamant. It took the National Human Rights Commission's strong statement to make them come down from their resolve. Former Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan also appealed to the prime minister to stop the yatras. Such pleas hardly matter to a party that is out to divide the nation.

New BJP chief Venkiah Naidu is going still further. He said the other day on a TV network that he would

ask the BJP ministers to spread the party's message. He does not realise the implications of the statement. External Affairs Minister, Finance Minister or, for that matter, any other minister is that of the country. True, he belongs to a party but in a notional sense only. Otherwise, it will be mixing politics with the state. Venkiah Naidu's emotional burst clouds his vision.

The BJP chief should have taken a leaf out of America's contemporary history. Both the Senate and the Congress unanimously passed a resolution to condemn 'bigotry and violence' against Sikh American citizens in the wake of the terrorist attack on September 11. The resolution was co-sponsored by 39 Senators and 131 Congressmen and

signed by President Bush to make it a law. The resolution regrets that many Sikhs "who are easily recognisable by their turbans and beards, which are required by their faith, have suffered both verbal and physical assaults as a result of misguided anger" after the September 11 attacks.

An American who killed a Sikh soon after the attacks was prosecuted and executed within a few months. But in India, where 3,000 Sikhs were massacred in Delhi alone, culprits have not been found till today, even after 18 years. Nor has parliament passed any resolution to condemn the large-scare murder. We have had a plethora of commissions to find out who were the guilty. One commission is still sitting in New Delhi.

The "ethnic cleansing" in Gujarat looks like meeting the same fate. The commission appointed to find out the guilty is yet to begin its work in right earnest. The senior member, Justice Nanavati, is busy with the commission on the Sikhs' massacre. That the BJP appointed him is not a coincidence. In the commission on Sikhs' massacre he is to pinpoint the Congress responsibility. In the Gujarat case, he will be finding out the culpability of the BJP. Quite a feat!

The Congress government never allowed the truth about the Sikh massacre to come out. The BJP will see to it that the truth about Gujarat remains hidden. The party has already given a clean chit to Modi. India's tragedy is that convenience has the better of the rule of law. Politics and crime have become the two sides of the same coin. Where is justice? Or is there anything called justice?

Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.