India's Own Beirut

The talk at 24-year-old Abdul Hamid's wake is of murderous revenge. "If someone gave me a gun, I'd kill a policeman," vows Gazala Qureishi, a pretty, 24-year-old business student whose anger draws respectful murmurs from the mourners. "I would empty all six chambers into him. I have the guts to kill those people, those stupid drunks who spill innocent blood here, rape girls, murder us, because we are Muslim." Qureishi's accusations are hard to deny: even hardened nationalists admit that an overwhelming body of anecdotal evidence and witness reports point to state complicity, and even involvement, in the anti-Muslim pogrom. Hamid...