The dreaded finally happened. The cynically targeted bullets of Pakistan's mercenaries that claimed the life of 30 Hindu pilgrims headed for the Amarnath Yatra (the final toll was 100, the rest dying in the cross-fire between  the Indian para-military and militants) caused a direct resonance in far-flung Gujarat.

In Ahmedabad, Surat, Sabarkantha (Lambadiya, Khed Brahma and Modasa villages) and Palanpur and Rajkot, Muslim business establishments - powerlooms, granaries. printing presses, shops and godowns - were cold- bloodedly targeted by indigenous terrorist squads led by eleeted representatives belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal (BD). In Surat alone, a senior correspondent of the Financial Express has estimated the total damage by the selective destruction through full-fledged arson of only Muslim-owned powerlooms ... at Rs. 10 crores totally. In the Modasa village of Sabarkantha district, of the 63 business establishments charred to nothingness, 51 belonged to Muslims, 12 to Hindus totaling to a loss of not less than Rs. 1.5 crores.

On August 1, 2000, the news of the massacre of Amarnath yatris was received throughout India with horror, the numbing stupor caused by this pre-mediated carnage only pierced by many concerned protests by Muslim organizations and rights' groups all over India, fearful of the consequences of this carnage on the fragile internal peace within India. These anxieties were well justified. Within hours of the massacre on our northern borders, the self-styled leaders of Hindu extremist outfits expressed outrage and thereafter systematically geared up for their brand of retaliation.

In Mumbai, the recently humiliated chiel of the Shiv Sena (SS) Bal Thackeray's Hindi cveninger Dophar ka Saamna flashed a headline, "Hindu ilakon mein shokh, Muslim mohallon mein jashan" (Grief in Hindu areas, celebration in Muslim areas), a blatant falsehood that was allowed to pas uncontested by the city's police, never particularly concerned by the brewing of communal sentiments.

In Gujarat, the intentions were far more ruthless and sinister. International general secretary of the VHP, Praveen Togadia, announced at a press conference in Ahmedabad on August 2, 2000 that the VHP was declaring a state-wide bandh in protest ... The Gujarat government, ruled by the BJP, formally declared its support to the bandh. Within hours, all-Gujarat-based textile manufacturing associations and the Surat Textiles.

Federation and Diamond Merchants had also extended support.

If Gujarat is Hindutva's laboratory, as the proud proponents of this political ideology have so often declared, what took place in Gujarat on the day of the bandh on August 3, and for a week thereafter, should, be  viewed as one more test case of Hindutva in action.

Despite the fact that many Muslims closed down business and shops on that fateful day ... for the squads of Hindu Rashtra, this was just not enough. Publicly, office bearers of the VHP and BD, and in many cases helped by elected representatives of the BJP, bayed for more blood in revenge ... and got it with the help of the government and the police: destruction worth crores and all in the form of property and businesses owned by Muslins ..

The most noticeable trend in this round of minority targeting that has, since 1998, especially taken on a blatant and public form, was that the post-bandh violent incidents in different parts of Gujarat were motivated by a systematic aim to economically cripple the minority community. The total number of lives lost were 5 from Surat and 2 adivasis who were part of a violent mob and died due to police firing in Lamabdia village of Sabarkantha.

But it was the scale and venom of the destruction that has resulted in mass-scale evacuation and resultant ghettoisation already being enforced by the hit squads of the VHP-Bajrang Dal and the BJP in urban arcas of Gujarat that is noteworthy. This time the squads successfully moved to adivasi-dominated tribal areas. The venom behind the hurling of rocks in, the Lamabdiya village over two days, August 4 and 5 rocks systematically  at Muslim shops and even some homes destroyed a harmony existing between adivasis and the minorities for centuries and which, in turn, has led to mass-scale evacuation from the villages by resident Muslims ...

Two years ago, in August 1998, when pre-mediated violence broke out in Randhikpur and Sanjeli in Gujarat .. investigations by civil liberties groups had (brought out  that) the destruction had been pre-planned to enable take-over of the local transport business, then in the hands of Muslims once they were cleansed through terror out of the area.

These attacks had been accompanied by a spate of violent attacks against the state's Christian minorities between 1998 and 2000 ... In many of these attacks the senior functionaries of the BJP-VHIP and BD were directly named by the police but no action was taken thanks to blatant pressure by a partisan executive. These steps have also been accompanied by administrative measures that are prejudicial and biased, some of which have been challenged (though not all reversed) in the state's Courts.

Similarly in the recent bout of post-bandh violence, both the administration and the police were either browbeaten into paralysis or actually assisting the zealots ...

In other parts of Gujarat on bandh day, squads of the Hindu extremist groups had a field day on the streets; like never before the bandh related violence exposed the lawlessness of not merely the VIIP-BD squads but the.