To think of Narendra Modi, the four-term chief minister of Gujarat, as a potential prime minister and the man who might revive the flagging fortunes of the B.J.P., India's main opposition party, is to ignore the reality of Gujarat.

Most infamously, Modi has been accused of deliberately allowing the sectarian mob violence that killed more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, in 2002, soon after he became chief minister. This may have been an extreme episode, but it is consistent with Modi's divisive and exclusionary approach to governance and his efforts to marginalize Muslims.
Read Hartosh Singh Bal's column on the International Herald Tribune.