Since the Bharatiya Janata Party meeting in Goa last week, I have found myself seriously wondering if another partition of India is not a very real and frightening possibility. If you think I am being melodramatic try for a moment to put yourself in the position of the one lakh Muslims who currently live in the camps of Gujarat. Where can they go? How do we expect them to live? Not only have they seen brothers, sons and fathers tortured to death, sisters and mothers raped and thrown naked into the streets, but they now have no homes to go back to and no means of ever earning a livelihood if the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's attempt at an economic boycott succeeds. Conditions in the camps are unfit for human habitation-no real shelter, no food, no medicines for the sick-and the only help they are getting is from a handful of dedicated non-governmental organisations like Ela Bhatt's sewa.

The Government's own welfare institutions only stirred themselves into momentary action when Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee decided-between his holiday in Nainital and his travels abroad-to turn up in Ahmedabad to shed a few crocodile tears. It was not his best speech and there was a lot of self-absorbed whingeing about how he could not show his face abroad. But at least he told Narendra Modi that he did not approve of what had happened. Under the rules of rajdharma, he said, the ruler needed to treat all his subjects equally. In these depressing times, when political columnists of the optimistic bent clutch at any straw, this gave me hope that Vajpayee would take a firm stand with his party and tell them that what happened in Gujarat was shameful and wrong. And, that the only way to make up for the disgraceful incompetence of the BJP Government in that state was for heads to roll and for the party to get down to some serious rehabilitation and reconstruction in the hope that the wounds would begin to heal. The prime minister had offered to resign when at odds with his party earlier and for some reason I thought he would do so this time, if only to make it clear that he did not approve at all of what had happened in Gujarat.

Vajpayee has always been a moderate-by BJP standards a bleeding-heart liberal-and has been loved for this by Indians of all caste and creed. Muslims, who have feared the BJP and its mother ship the RSS, believed-it turns out wrongly-that as long as Vajpayee was prime minister he would not allow the sort of communal killings they live in dread of. Most Hindus, at least in the view of this humble columnist, are shamed by Gujarat: not just by the sickening violence but that it appears to have occurred with the approval of the state Government. So, had Vajpayee the courage to resign and make it clear to his party that he was not with them when they insisted Modi was a hero and not a repellent villain, he would have returned from Goa as India's leader. Instead, he has come back as a pathetic foot soldier, a camp follower who marches even under banners he does not believe in.

In his desperation to be accepted back into the Sangh Parivar fold he went to the extent of justifying the violence in Gujarat-"Godhra mein aag kisney lagayi?" You tell us prime minister, that is your job, as it is your job to heal Gujarat's wounds and your job to set the country's agenda. Judging from the BJP National Executive's meeting, it is the party (read RSS) that has set the agenda and the prime minister who is being made to follow.

It is an agenda that could, if followed by the ruling party, lead not only to another partition of India but war in the subcontinent. Listen only to the RSS vision of the future as articulated by its spokesman, Madhav Govind Vaidya, last week in The Times of India: "We believe the whole of Kashmir is an integral part of India. If it's to be integrated, war is the last resort. But why rule it out? What is the military for? It has to be used sometimes. We are for friendly relations with our neighbours. We are also for Akhand Bharat." This means the obliteration of Pakistan and Bangladesh, but the RSS military strategists clearly think this is an achievable objective. The prime minister needs to explain whether he believes in this RSS vision of the future of the Indian subcontinent. And, the parties that make up the National Democratic Alliance also need to do more than make angry noises in the background.

Meanwhile, the BJP plans to test its return to hardline Hindu nationalism in the ravaged towns and cities of Gujarat. So instead of concentrating on rehabilitation, healing and justice, Chief Minister Modi will soon hit the campaign trail. His political career depends on winning because if he does, he could one day be prime minister. Our problem is that if he does win, it will be seen as sanction for pogrom politics and if the Gujarat experiment is tried on a national scale, what will become of India?