It is difficult to believe that a prime minister would actually utter those words. One newspaper carried the words in a box. Other papers confirmed that Atal Bihari Vajpayee had indeed spoken those words at a public meeting in Goa. April 12, 2002 will go down in Vajpayee's life as the day when he cast off his rajdharma and was reborn as a true swayamsevak. In his hour of reckoning, the prime minister of India has decided what he wants to be.

My memory goes back to my school days. My mother got our school uniforms stitched by a tailor named Zynulabdeen. For five years in high school (run by Christian missionaries), my class pupil leader was A.K. Moosa. In Form VI, our headmaster, the redoubtable Mr Kuruvilla Jacob, wanted a tall, handsome, fluent-in-English boy as school pupil leader and so we chose Haroon Mohammed. Thanks to an education in Christian institutions, I had many Christian friends. And Muslim friends. Nobody perceived any differences. It was only after many years that I noticed that people had different religious beliefs and different ways of worship.

The worlds of art, literature, sports, and cinema-especially cinema-have been adorned by many Muslims. A.R. Rahman dazzles his fans both in India and abroad. Sheikh Chinna Moulana ranked along with the legendary nadaswara vidwans Tiruvavaduthurai Rajarathinam and Karukurichi Arunachalam. Zakir Hussain on the tabla and Amjad Ali Khan on his sarod weave pure magic. Ustad Bismillah Khan is a living legend. The Nawab of Pataudi and Mohammad Azharuddin were among India's most stylish batsmen-and most successful captains. When Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was awarded the Bharat Ratna, I was the first to drive to his office and offer him congratulations and flowers. Among the distinguished chief justices of the Supreme Court were Justice M. Hidayatullah and Justice A.M. Ahmadi. In Chennai, we had chief justice M.M. Ismail, and there are few people who are regarded as greater scholars of the Ramayana (by Kamban, the Tamil poet) than justice Ismail. If you take out Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Saif Ali Khan and Aamir Khan, there is little left of Bollywood.

I wish to ask the prime minister a simple question. When he said "Wherever Muslims are, they don't want to live in peace. They don't want to mix with others. They use terror as a weapon", did he include Dr Abdul Kalam, the Nawab of Pataudi and Amjad Ali Khan? If he did not, he should tender an unqualified apology for defaming 120 million people who have as much right to live in this country as he and I have. He should also step down in atonement for this unpardonable calumny.

Has Vajpayee seen the leaflets being circulated in Gujarat calling for an economic boycott of Muslims? Does he know that Muslims are being driven out of mixed neighbourhoods and pushed into ghettos? Has he read the interviews given by VHP General Secretary Pravin Togadia?

I suspect that General Pervez Musharraf is the happiest man today. For months, he has been telling anyone who cared to listen that Pakistan is an Islamic nation and India is a Hindu nation. His case on Kashmir is based on the argument that a Muslim-majority state "belongs" to Pakistan and not to India. For over 50 years we denounced the two-nation theory. The world tended to believe us when we said that India was a plural, multi-religious and multi-cultural society. This was despite many communal riots. Why? Because no communal riot in the past had the official support and blessings of a chief minister and his government. It is for the first time that we have seen a state Government actively conniving with criminals to organise a pogrom against the Muslims.

When Vajpayee spoke of rajdharma on his visit to relief camps, no one would have believed that he would do a volte-face in the space of a few days. Rajdharma applies equally to a chief minister and to a prime minister. No matter what the BJP's allies will now do or not do, the unravelling of the NDA Government has begun. The name of the game hereafter, for the BJP and its allies, is survival. That is why the angst of the Telugu Desam Party will not turn into withdrawal of support. That is why the DMK will demand a meeting of the NDA but remain neutral or silent.

Economic reforms have stalled. The average level of the fiscal deficit is higher, tariffs are among the highest in the world, the manufacturing sector has weakened considerably, subsidies are increasing and investment flows have sharply declined. As T.N. Ninan has pointed out, this perhaps is the most "revisionist" government since reforms began. Between the reborn swayamsevak prime minister and the sulking, chastened finance minister there is neither the spirit nor the wisdom to carry the reform process forward. After Gujarat and Goa, it is no longer non-governance. It is a case of misgovernance.

(The author is a former Indian finance minister. These are his personal views)