As riot-hit Muzaffarnagar votes, religious divide favours Narendra Modi

Manoj Balyan wants Narendra Modi to become India's next prime minister when results of a general election are released next month, and not because of the pro-business opposition leader's record as a credible economic manager.

Instead, the property broker and village chieftain is drawn to the Hindu nationalist side of Modi, 63, who he believes will strip privileges from India's minority Muslim population. "With Modi taking office, Muslims will automatically feel the pressure. They will not dare to raise their voice," said Balyan, 42, to nods of approval from a group of friends.

Such views are common in settlements around the sugarcane belt of Muzaffarnagar in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh state, which was hit by deadly religious strife last year.

The election is spread out over five weeks, with voting ending on May 12. It was the turn of voters in Delhi, the capital, on Thursday and many parts of Uttar Pradesh, including Muzaffarnagar, where Modi's popularity is running high and Muslims are worried about their future.

For many of the 815 million registered to vote, Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) represent a promise of better governance, industrial growth and job creation.

But accusations that other parties help Muslims at the expense of the Hindu majority have become an increasingly prominent part of the BJP's campaign in recent weeks - notably where in areas where religious tensions run high.

The violence in Muzaffarnagar left some 65 dead, including four in Balyan's village 118 km (73 miles) northeast of Delhi.

Like many others voting in the red-brick villages, Balyan blames Muslim neighbours for starting the violence and the state government for refusing to keep the perpetrators locked up. "People have been attracted towards BJP because of the riots," said Balyan, who belongs to the same Hindu caste as -and shares a surname with - the BJP parliamentary candidate in Muzaffarnagar. He openly admits to joining the frenzy of violence. "I supported my people by providing necessary material. They went in large numbers to other villages to teach Muslims a lesson," he said with a grin, scratching at a stubbly beard.

APPEAL TO HINDUS
The BJP has appealed to the sense of Hindu victimhood felt by Balyan. Modi's campaign manager Amit Shah was reprimanded this week by election authorities for speeches around Muzaffarnagar that appeared to justify the riots and accuse Muslims of raping, killing and humiliating Hindus.

Modi is favourite to become prime minister, opinion polls have shown, but his BJP needs a big win in Uttar Pradesh, a state with a population comparable to Brazil that sends more lawmakers to parliament than any other.

India's 1.2 billion people include about 150 million Muslims and they form a significant minority in Uttar Pradesh. By adding religious and caste issues to its broader national appeal based on good governance, the BJP is making a last-minute push for support in the electorally vital state, analysts said. "This would help them mobilise votes at the last moment. That could be the calculation to harvest votes in Uttar Pradesh," said E. Sridharan, of the Pennsylvania Center for Advanced Study of India.

The party's manifesto, published this week, kept in place several issues dear to the party's Hindu nationalist core, including doing away with laws that apply only to Muslims that it sees as favouritism.

Almost all the victims of last year's riots were Muslims, including about 12,000 people who were made homeless and now shelter under tents on plots of land bought with compensation money.

On Sept. 8, door-to-door cloth seller Babu Khan fled the village his family had lived in for centuries. A Muslim, he now lives with dozens of other refugees a few miles away, his home empty among the charred buildings and abandoned mosques left by a mob of thousands.

Khan shows a mark on his leg he says was caused by a bullet. But the emotional scars run deeper. "We will never go back to the village. We would prefer to beg on the road than go back," said Khan, whose brother was killed in the rioting, along with seven of his neighbours. "My brother got a call from someone outside, and he went out while still speaking over his mobile. We found his body the next day in the nearby fields, with cut marks on his hands, neck and face," Khan said, sitting at a makeshift tea stall at the camp.

ABANDONED MOSQUES
Khan's former village, Kutba, is the home of the BJP's parliamentary candidate Sanjeev Balyan. It now has no Muslim residents and although 800 of them are registered as voters, not one had cast a ballot by midday.

Almost everybody, including children, wear orange "Modi for PM" hats and BJP flags flutter from the rooftops.

The BJP is not the only party to seek electoral benefit in tensions between India's Muslims and Hindus, which goes back centuries and erupted in a frenzy of bloodshed that killed hundreds of thousands when colonial India was divided in 1947 into Hindu-majority India and Pakistan, an Islamic state.

The Samajwadi Party, which runs the government in Uttar Pradesh, is wooing Muslims. The ruling Congress party sought and received the support of the imam or chief priest of the Jama Masjid, India's biggest mosque, for the election.

Back in Kutba, BJP supporter Pintu Choudhry stood in the open door of a derelict green-tiled mosque, and accused local Muslims of preferring India's arch-rival to their own country. "They eat the food of India, but raise slogans in favour of Pakistan," he said, stepping into the empty street.