Gujarat, the day after, is far from being a normal state. The big fire may have been doused, however belatedly, but the groundswell of communal passion makes it a highly inflammable state. The dynamic of hate is still at work in remote ghettos and there is also the slow process of overcoming the demonic fury that had killed, maimed and burned. The most visible process though, is the manner of dealing with the guilty who, almost universally, has been identified as Narendra Modi, the chief minister. After the instant left-liberal-secular verdict-it's a state-sponsored riot!-comes the official indictment in the form of the National Human Rights Commission's findings: Modi didn't do enough to control the communal rampage. True, the state administration was ineffective in dealing with the killing mob in Ahmedabad and elsewhere in Gujarat. Post-Godhra, the Government in Gandhinagar should have anticipated a Hindu backlash. A riot, in its initial eruption, is so spontaneous that it takes a while for reason to catch up with passion, violent and elemental. Still, the state should have intervened effectively to stop the carnage. And Modi could have shown some real leadership.

Today, the challenge is all about regaining Gujarat whose agony cannot be reduced to the size of Modi's perceived crime. For, every conscience keeper is busy making Gujarat a vast Sangh Parivar conspiracy with Modi as the chief plotter. This is the simplest way of coming to terms with the social tragedy of Gujarat. The state today is a perforated society where the divide between communities is as huge as the mutual mistrust. It will remain so as long as the Muslim fear is directly proportional to the Hindu anger. It is a clash between ghettoised victimhood and majoritarian grievance. This is part of a larger Indian situation where the minority politics, more specifically Muslim politics, is built on social separatism. The ghetto is an essential requirement in that politics. The Muslim political leadership wants its constituency to remain isolated from the mainstream. This constituency is sustained by a regulation diet of victimhood. The politically conscious majority thinks the Hindu alone has to be apologetic about being a Hindu. It is this maladjusted society that came apart in Gujarat. The national responsibility at the moment is to put the state back to a workable social order. If Modi's removal is a prerequisite for that, let him go.