India was last night bracing itself for a bloody upsurge in religious tension after a crowd of angry Muslims yesterday set light to a packed train carrying Hindu activists, killing at least 57 people, including 15 children.
Hours after the morning attack in Godhra, police were still pulling charred bodies burned beyond recognition out of the blackened carriages of the Sabarmati Express in the western state of Gujarat. Some 43 people were injured in the attack, many critically.
Yesterday's incident appears to have started after some of the activists taunted a Muslim youth on the station platform and shouted pro-Hindu slogans. A crowd of Muslims then stopped the train soon after it set off towards its destination, Ahmedabad, three hours away. They poured kerosene into four carriages, and watched as the passengers tried to escape through barred windows.
"I heard screams for help as I came out of the house. I saw a huge ball of fire," said Rakesh Kimani, 18, who lives nearby. "I saw people putting out their hands and heads through the windows trying to escape. It was a horrible sight."
The local police chief, Raju Bhargava, said the known victims were 15 children, 25 women and 17 men. Asked whether Muslims were responsible, he said: "It appears so."
The Hindu activists had been returning from the northern town of Ayodhya, where thousands have been gathering to campaign for the building of a temple on the ruins of a mosque, the Babri Masjid.
Its destruction 10 years ago by Hindu zealots provoked the worst rioting in India since partition, killing more than 3,000 people.
With the prospect of a wave of communal violence across the country, India's prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, last night appealed for calm. He cancelled a trip to Australia for the forthcoming Commonwealth summit in Brisbane. Extra policemen were drafted into Old Delhi and other urban areas with large Muslim populations, to prevent reprisals.
Gujarat's Hindu nationalist state minister, Gorbardhan Jhorapia, last night claimed the attack on the train was "well-coordinated and pre-planned".
As news of the massacre spread there were several attacks on Muslims across the state. Two people were stabbed in the towns of Anand and Baroda, while a mob set light to buses in Ahmedabad.
Mr Vajpayaee, whose Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) swept to power in the mid-1990s, appealed to the World Hindu Council, or VHP, to abandon its plan to build a temple on the disputed Ayodhya site. "This incident is very sad, unfortunate," he said. "I would appeal to the VHP to suspend their campaign and help government in maintaining peace and brotherhood in the country."
But the VHP said last night it would stick to its deadline for building work to begin in Ayodhya by March 15.
In an attempt to dampen the growing crisis the government yesterday banned more Hindu activists from pouring into the town. It also stopped the trans port of temple pillars to the heavily guarded site, which is surrounded by razor wire.
Ayodhya remains the most divisive and explosive issue in Indian politics. Although Mr Vajpayee's party emerged from the same Hindu revivalist movement as the VHP, he has increasingly distanced himself from the demands of his old and frequently unreasonable allies. He has called on the courts to resolve the temple dispute.
India's hardline home minister, Lal Krishna Advani, who was at Ayodhya when the mosque was destroyed but denies charges of having encouraged it, also warned the VHP that anyone moving to build the temple would face legal action.
"The Vishwa Hindu Parishad has embarked on a course of action in Ayodhya which is fraught with dangerous consequences," he said in a statement. "The developments in Ayodhya can thus precipitate a serious law and order problem."
Why the mob, which witnesses said numbered several hundred, attacked the train at 6.30am was not immediately clear.
Police in some areas of Godhra were ordered last night to shoot troublemakers on sight. The town of 300,000 was shuttered and the streets largely deserted.
Muslims comprise about 40% of Godhra's population, compared to a national average of about 12%.
The World Hindu Council has called for a state-wide strike today to protest against the attack - one of the most gruesome incidents of communal violence in a decade. "It will be done in a peaceful manner. We will not allow any violence," the council's vice-president Acharaya Giriraj Kishore said.
Council officials in neighbouring Maharashtra state called for a similar strike.
Flouting court orders banning any construction until the row is settled, the VHP has initiated a holy ceremony as a prelude to building the temple next month.
All activity at the site has been frozen while a state court rules on the dispute. But hardline Hindus say it is taking too long and last year set a deadline of March for construction.