Narendra Modi. Photo / Reuters
In India's largest supermarket, in front of rows of Japanese electronics, French perfume and Californian plums, it is hard to find anyone who does not support Narendra Modi.
This is home turf for the charismatic and controversial chief minister of the western state of Gujarat, who has brought
development with a hardline Hindu nationalist face.
"You can see all the development in Gujarat, the roads are very good, a lot of malls, entertainment centres, the express highway," said 23-year-old Chirayu Patel, a Hindu who works for Nokia.
Gujarat is one of the richest and fastest growing states in a booming India, and the gleaming Reliance Mart in its main city Ahmedabad is a symbol of consumerist culture in a region where money was always important.
Modi's business-friendly and relatively efficient government is taking credit for what he calls "Vibrant Gujarat".
But on the other side of town, vibrancy is in desperately short supply. Here, the minority Muslim population lives in poverty, in what can only be described as ghettoes.
Discrimination and division is deep-rooted in Ahmedabad. Muslims cannot buy or rent property in Hindu parts of town, the two communities living separately, and in fear of each other. About 2,000 people - mostly Muslims - died in riots in 2002.
Outside Gujarat, many Indians wonder how their Hindu brothers can so casually re-elect such a divisive figure as Modi.
"Everybody does good and bad things but the good things he has done are so much," said Devina Bhardwaj.
And the riots? "I have not seen him doing it," she said. "There have always been riots in Ahmedabad."
Hardik Parikh, a 23-year-old student, went further. The riots, he says, were necessary, after Muslim militants had set off bombs in Mumbai in 1993 and attacked India's parliament in 2001.
"It was important to teach the Muslims a lesson. They are mushrooming and they will start to kill Hindus."
- REUTERS
