Two killed in post-election violence in India

Two men have been stabbed to death in India’s western state of Gujarat as Hindu nationalists celebrated a landslide win in state elections.

A triumphant Bharatiya Janata Party took 126 seats and now controls two-thirds of the 182-seat assembly in Gujarat, where more than 1,000 people were killed earlier this year in the worst Hindu-Muslim rioting for a decade.

Hardline Hindu supremacists see their election victory as a mandate to turn secular India into a Hindu state.

“India will become a Hindu state within two years from now and the Gujarat election results are just an indication,” said Pravin Togadia, a senior leader of the right wing Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council, a close ally of the BJP.

“India is a country for the Hindus and not made for the Muslims,” he said. “They have Pakistan, where they can live if they want.”

Ramesh Raiyani, a BJP worker, was stabbed to death last night by Muslims in the central city of Rajkot after the BJP marched through, police said.

“A group of BJP members, some of them on motorcycles, took out a victory procession and shouted anti-minority slogans which infuriated the Muslim residents of the area,” said VV Rabari, Rajkot police commissioner.

“Ramesh was at the tail end of the procession, so he was dragged away and stabbed to death.”

Police have imposed a curfew in Rajkot and its suburbs, he said.

In a separate attack, Ashok Solanki, a member of the opposition Congress party, was stabbed to death in the Gajranwadi neighbourhood of Vadodara town, 70 miles east of Ahmadabad, Gujarat’s commercial capital.

Tension between Hindus and Muslims has intensified since the results were announced yesterday of last week’s vote.

Six shops and four roadside kiosks belonging to Hindus and Muslims were set on fire today by rioting mobs in the Shiapura and Nawabwada neighbourhoods of Vadodara.

Six people were injured, including one from gunshot wounds sustained when police opened fire to disperse the mobs, said D D Tuteja, Vadodara police commissioner.