Militant Hindu nationalism and violence has once again reared its ugly head in India. Since the end of February, it has led to the deaths of over 600 people, mostly Muslims in the state of Gujurat.

The horrific barbarism saw Muslims, men, women and babies, being burned alive, Hindu mobs tearing down mosques and in a number of cases building Hindu temples on their ruins. What makes the violence even more sickening is the fact that a number of law enforcement and elected officials were complicit in the attacks, some of them even leading them.

Other non-Muslims were not left unscathed though. Christians have also been prime targets in this situation, as well as in the past. Such support for communal violence on the part of a government has led to calls for the dismissal of Home Minister L.K. Advani and Gujurat minister Narendra Modi and his government. Modi not only added insult to the injuries of hundreds of Muslims when he offered more compensation to Hindu victims of violence than to Muslims. As of this writing, the death toll continues to climb, although the violence had calmed down considerably. What remains to be seen is how India, the self-proclaimed "largest democracy of the world", will handle the fallout of the worst inter-religious violence in the country in a decade.