One morning we set out from Godhra to Akshardham

was. Many people come and take a look inside: big politicians, officers, journalists, and foreigners.’’

Of the two coaches one is so badly burned that its paint has melted and its roof crumpled. The other is almost intact but for some broken windows. The policeman does not stop me as I walk up the steps of the more badly burned coach but the horror of what happened here nearly does. It is so tangible I re-live those last awful moments of those who died here through the debris that remains. A child’s steel glass, a torn red sari with a gold border, a purple one printed with white flowers lying crumpled under what remains of a lower berth. A man’s shoe lying upturned in heaps of burned stuffing and bits of twisted metal and wood. Horror frozen like some macabre still life in this sunlit railway carriage.

One section of the carriage’s iron flooring is burned through to the metal planks below. What caused this to happen in only that particular place? How could burning rags, ostensibly thrown in by an enraged, chaotic mob, have caused this to happen? Why did the 59 people who died in the carriage not manage to jump out as others did? Why has the debris from this coach not been taken already to some forensic laboratory to be examined for the secrets that could lie concealed?

‘‘Yes, ofcourse the police still comes and picks anyone up at the drop of a hat but we are used to it. Just as we are used to being blamed for setting the train on fire when it had nothing to do with us.’’

These were the first of many questions I was to ask myself as I drove from Godhra to Akshardham, last week, to get a sense of what could have happened if the Vishwa Hindu Parishad had not been denied permission for their yatra on this route by the Election Commission.

My yatra began as theirs would have — from Godhra railway station — but, as theirs would almost certainly not have done, it continued through the town’s Muslim quarter that locals told me was divided from the Hindu area ‘by a border’. On the other side of that border is the Bharatiya Janata Party ’s candidate from Godhra in the coming election.

BJP’s Godhra candidate

Haresh Bhai Bhatt, former vice-president of the Bajrang Dal, has no intention of even attempting to get the Muslim vote. He wore spotless white and an enormous red tika and exuded confidence.

‘‘I want to change the impression of Godhra’’ he said through his enormous whiskers ‘‘people seem to think this is a Muslim town. But, in fact there are only 27,000 Muslim votes out of 188,000. This is a peaceful town that has got maligned as a violent place because a particular community did something. I want to change this impression so my slogan is Aapno Godhra, raiyon Godhra.’’ (Our Godhra is a prosperous Godhra).

When asked about Muslims he said they had never voted for the BJP and he had no expectations from them. ‘‘Name me a single violent incident in which it has been proved that the Bajrang Dal was involved. I tell you they blamed us for the Jhabua thing (rape of nuns) and they were proved wrong. Then they tried to involve us in the Staines case (muder of missionary Graham Staines) and an inquiry has established that we had nothing to do with it. We do not believe in violence, our slogan is Sewa, Sanskar, Suraksha.

What about the demolition of the Babri Masjid? There were thousands of kar sewaks there, he boomed, but if they want to give the Bajrang Dal the whole credit we are not saying no. Was it right to go around pulling mosques down? ‘‘It wasn’t a mosque at all. It was a temple and we pulled it down to repair it.’’

The Muslim Quarters

In a flurry of white ambassador cars he then set off to woo Godhra’s Hindu voters. I set off to cross ‘the border’.. On the drive there a local Hindu journalist (religious identification is important in Godhra) told me that the BJP was shamelessly putting up candidates – Kalubhai Maliwad and Kabhai Chauhan- known for their hatred of Muslims. The former, he said, had spent six months in jail for alleged involvement in a massacre of 42 Muslims in Limadia Chowk. The latter had been jailed for rape and murder in Kalol. Both were contesting from riot- ravaged Panchmahal.

“My younger son was in the shop when this mob of Muslims came and stabbed him just because he was Hindu. My older son heard and ran to save his brother and they killed him too’’ Dinesh Bhai

After driving through streets that got ever narrower and bazaars and residential areas more unkempt we arrived on the Muslim side. I stopped to talk to a group of young men who had gathered beside a small mosque. Were inter-communal feelings less tense, I asked, and a young man called Yusuf told me in English that it did not matter because the two communities in Godhra were now divided by ‘a wall’. As for the elections, they did not matter either because the Muslims had lost faith totally in the state’s ability to protect or represent them. ‘‘Yes, of course the police still comes and picks anyone up at the drop of a hat but we are used to it. Just as we are used to being blamed for setting the train on fire when it had nothing to do with us. The people they have arrested from Godhra are all innocent. It is a political game.’’

By now a crowd of young men had gathered round and they were adamant that the karsewaks burned alive on the Sabarmati Express last February had been killed as part of a conspiracy to malign Muslims. A young man, who asked not to be named, said, ‘‘It was all pre-planned. If it hadn’t been Godhra, it would have happened somewhere else because to get re-elected the BJP needed to stir upcommunal feelings.’’

Were they saying that a mob of Godhra Muslims had not attacked the Sabarmati Express that day? Not quite. A large number of local Muslims had gone to Signal Falia that day but it was because they heard that the karsewaks had molested young Muslim girls at Godhra railway station and they went to see what happened. They arrived, they claimed, after the coaches had already been set on fire and the police drove them away by shooting into the crowd killing two young men.

‘‘Haven’t you read the report of the Forensic Sciences Laboratory that says that the bogeys were set on fire from the inside? Go and see for yourself that at Signal Falia, the track is on a height so it cannot be attacked by a mob.’’

‘‘After Godhra Modi gave us time to deal with them.’’ Jignesh Joshi

I did go and see, as we set off towards Ahmedabad and Akshardham but before that I was led to a small darkened room in which Bilkees, 22, from Randhirpura sat holding her four-month old baby girl. Her husband who was being interviewed by a journalist from Newsweek in the next room said I could go and meet his wife but because ‘‘she was under tension’’ I should not ask her too many questions. He would tell me later what had happened.

Bilkees cradled her little daughter and stared at the wall in front of her, trying to find the safest thing to talk about I said the baby was beautiful. She smiled hesitantly and held the baby closer. Was it her first child, I asked, to continue the conversation. ‘‘No’’ she said, her smile disappearing ‘‘they killed my first child who was only three years old.’’

Later thy told me she had been raped by sixteen men and did not like being interviewed any more because she did not see how it would help. She and her family were unable to go back to their village and so had been settled with another family by the Islamic Relief Committee. Ahmed Hussain who had helped run the Godhra relief camp said there were hundreds of families who were unable to return to their former homes so they had been settled with families in Godhra but were still unable to earn a living because of their traditional means of employment having been disrupted.

Signal Falia

By the time I left Godhra I was already emotionally drained and the yatra to Akshardham had barely begun. At Signal Falia I talked to local Muslims who lived closest to the scene of the crime in a cluster of small, windowless hovels separated from the railway track by a wall. What had they seen happen that day? Nothing, they said because as soon as the stones started flying they had run away from their homes and when they returned the train had already been set on fire. Where were the stones and arrows coming from, I asked, and got the first answer of the day that made me wonder if some massive propaganda campaign was not at work among the Muslims.

‘‘It was the karsewaks who were throwing the stones.. They had climbed out of the train and were picking up stones from the track and throwing them.’’ But, how could they have seen this, I asked, if they ran away? No answer.

It was to be a yatra filled with many questions to which there were no answers. The most important: what happened that day on the Sabarmati Express? Muslims in Gujarat believe they are the victims of a dark conspiracy and that what happened in Godhra on February 27 was part of this conspiracy.

Sewalia

In Sewalia, on the road to Ahmedabad, I stopped to talk to young men at the shop of a paanwallah called Asif. They were all Muslims and convinced that the Godhra incident had been engineered. ‘‘They had to do it or there was no chance of the BJP winning the next election. You saw what happened in the municipal and panchayat elections, didn’t you? So, they had to have Godhra and if they hadn’t succeeded there then they would have done something else. Muncipal and panchayat elections held just before the Godhra incident had gone badly against the BJP with them losing strongholds like Ahmedabad.

A local Hindu leader said he would be voting Congress this time because the Modi government was completely incapable of governance. ‘‘No development work has happened at all.’’

A comment echoed in Thasra, where people said that they desperately needed water and electricity and not communalism. In Dakor, famous for its Ranchodhji temple, I wandered through a bazaar selling pictures of Hindu godsand found that while older people said they would be voting against the BJP because it had spread hatred and violence the youngsters took a different view.

In a shop filled with religious pictures in varying shapes and sizes I talked to Jignesh Joshi who considered Modi hero. Why I asked. ‘‘After Godhra Modi gave us time to deal with them.’’ He used the word chhoot in Hindi whichmeans license and it is this, and only this, that Modi seems to be popular for. Nobody says that he has brought prosperity to Gujarat. Yet, a large section of Gujarati Hindus believe that the Muslims being `naturally violent’ are a threat to the state.

Mahuda

In a dhaba in Khadol I had lunch with a middle-aged Hindu gentleman who told me that it was always the Muslims who started the violence. He that I should stop in the town of Mahuda and find out how two brothers were killed only for being Hindu. We did stop and were directed to the house of Dinesh Bhai who sat amid a small group of women in black saris mourning the death of his sons, Kirti Kumar, 22, and Dinesh, 20.

‘‘This happened on November 11’’ he said tonelessly ‘‘when Narendra Modi’s Gaurav Yatra was in Dakor and all the local policemen went to do duty there. My younger son was in the shop and I hear from eyewitnesses that he was lighting some incense when this mob of Muslims came and stabbed him just because they knew he was Hindu. My older son heard and ran to the shop to try and save his brother and they killed him too. Then they burned every shop in the bazaar.’’

Akshardham

Gujarat is so filled with stories like this that the very air seems poisoned with hate. By the time I got to Akshardham I was convinced that there was no hope of Hindus and Muslims ever living together. I was overcome by a feeling of such hopelessness that I went into the temple expecting only more despair. Had I not come here, after all, to be given a detailed account of how 33 Hindus had been massacred by two Muslim terrorists on September 24? What else would have brought me to this temple? Why else had the VHP wanted to end their yatra here? Why else was the Akshardham temple on BJP election posters?

They have started building a massive boundary wall around the temple now and security is so tight that armed policemen were the first people I saw. It did not surprise me because I had not come looking for peace or sanctity. What did surprise me was that this is what I found. A young man with a beatific smile greeted me as I entered and introduced himself as Jayesh Mandanka, a volunteer at the temple. He would like first, he said, to tell me a little about the temple and show me its exhibition halls and then he could show me where the terrorists had come in from and give me details of what happened.

So my yatra ended with a religious tour in which the sacred got so mixed with the profane and peace with violence that it was hard at times to tell which was which. I wandered through ornate rooms filled with religious sculptures and messages of peace — ‘‘you shall never commit homicide for any object, be it wealth, women or kingdom’’ — only to enter a courtyard which I was told had been covered in blood that day. ‘‘This is where they threw a grenade and killed most of their victims, then they jumped over that wall and escaped into the garden beyond. Then they went into that hall over there and started shooting blindly.’’

Moments later I would be in another hall and this time it was to see robots in a tableau on the life of Swaminarayan.

Somewhere along the way I was told that three days after the massacre the temple’s management had organised an all religious prayer meeting inside the temple. When I asked Jayesh about this he smiled and said, ‘‘Not just that but on the day of the attack some Muslim leaders had gone to see Swamiji (the current leader of the sect) and he greeted them with love.’’

So, maybe, the answer to Gujarat’s problems could come from a religious sect that has its origins in this state. When the election is over and there is finally time for reconciliation it could be in Akshardham that the religious and secular leaders of Hindus and Muslims come together under the uspices of the Swaminarayan sect to understand how to stop the hatred and violence.

Before that, though, there are other answers that are needed and they relate to what really happened in Godhra on February 27 of which the most important one is could the fire on the Sabarmati Express have been started by accident?

A long list of other questions remain unanswered. Why have those who survived not been properly interrogated? Why is it so hard for journalists to get a detailed list of those who were in the coaches that caught fire? Why does the Modi government seem so uninterested in finding answers? Why did he blame Pakistan on day one and then do nothing to prove his case? Why does the Central government have no answers yet? A journey that started with a search for answers should end with at least a few. Alas, in the case of this journey all I have come back with is more questions.