"...Hindus too have begun to suffer, thanks to a new belligerence of the Muslims who have been under siege for ten weeks. The repeated recovery of huge caches of weapons from Muslim pockets forced some of the ministers to ask Modi about the steps the police was taking to flush out these armouries. What is adding to the knife-edge tension is the growing evidence that the violence has a deliberate pattern and there’s a motive to keep the flames from being doused. Violence seemed to have been brought under control by the second week of March until sporadic attacks on Hindus in Ahmedabad, Bharuch, and Modasa in the midst of the state school board examinations reignited the embers. But it escalated on Ram Navmi day when a police constable was killed in Ahmedabad’s Gomtipur area. The sudden spurt of violence followed a call given by local Muslim leaders to students from the community to boycott the rescheduled state school board examinations failed. Significantly, among those who were exhorting the students to boycott the exams were five local Congress leaders besides members of the radical Islamic movement, the Tableeghi Jamaat. Local BJP leaders point to other incidents to suggest there was a method in the mayhem. Hours after Defence Minister George Fernandes led a peace march in Ahmedabad violence broke out on the route he had taken. The area had not witnessed any riots in the recent past. Strangely, the rioting stopped a day before Sonia Gandhi’s peace rally in Ahmedabad on May 1. But, on May 5, a day before the Rajya Sabha debated the censure motion, and barely 24 hours after Gill took over his Gujarat assignment, violence erupted again. This time Muslim rioters attacked Bhilwas locality in the Shah Alam area. Says political analyst Vidyut Thakar, “A pattern is visible in the new round of violence. There is an impression that it has to do with the Modi-hatao campaign...”"