Times of India journalist SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN has a stinging editorial in today's paper concerning the ability of Indian political parties to manipulate communal violence for partisan purposes without bringing the perpetrators to justice. Varadarajan draws parallels between the BJP in Gujarat and the Congress Party in 1984 after a masscre of Sikhs in the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Two paragraphs are worth quoting in full:

It is a bitter lesson but the victims of Gujarat are realising today what the victims of 1984 realised some years ago: In India, if you are a victim of mass violence, votes will be sought in your name and any number of inquiry commissions set up. But justice will never be done and you will never be compensated or rehabilitated. Just ask the Kashmiri Pandit refugees still living in squalid camps in Jammu 12 years after fleeing their homes.

Today, BJP supporters will be jubilant at Mr Modi's victory and Congress supporters despondent. But from the point of view of the victims, the struggle for justice and rehabilitation was always an uphill one anyway and that struggle needs the widest possible support. We need to ask ourselves whether we want to live in a society where the police can turn against the victims of violence, and killers capable of the most heinous crimes are free to roam the streets.