Quotes of the Day

When the slaughter of Muslims in India's Gujarat state began last year, murderous Hindu mobs descended on Muslim neighborhoods with torches, swords and tridents. Only after four days and the calling in of the army did the brutal pogrom cease.

But even after the violence had ebbed, most aid workers were reluctant to visit the remote villages of central Gujarat. The exceptions were four remarkable women: Jahnvi Andharia, Sejal Dand, Nita Hardikar and Sumitra Thacker. Together, these four run Area Networking and Development Initiative (ANANDI), a voluntary group whose main mission is to bring education, health care and microcredit schemes to small hamlets. Initially, just after the riots, ANANDI was the only crusader for justice for the rural victims of the Gujarat massacres. "These girls were incredible," says Jaya Srivastava, a New Delhi-based activist who organizes relief for Gujarat's victims. "They took any vehicle they could, sometimes even walking, to reach isolated areas."

Today, ANANDI is helping pursue court cases against alleged killers and rapists, and rebuilding destroyed homes. But Gujarat's religious violence has so scarred psyches and twisted political life that nationalists have branded ANANDI anti-Hindu, even though all four founders are from Hindu backgrounds. "For years," mourns Andharia, "we were sure in the knowledge that as Hindus, as Gujratis, we don't do this sort of thing. After the riots, that idea has been shattered." Their state has been torn apart; they are part of a very small minority trying to pull it back together.

• Meenakshi Ganguly/Bhavnagar
• A sisterhood nurses the wounds of a battered state