The BJP should have known better. Many of its top leaders, including Messrs L.K. Advani and M.M. Joshi, face criminal charges. Its former president was caught accepting a bribe by Tehelka.

In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP has proportionally more people with criminal convictions than any other party. Mr Vajpayee re-inducted Mr George Fernandes into his Cabinet although he hadn't been cleared of corruption charges.

The BJP is trying to equate Ms Bharati's case with Coal Minister Shibu Soren's. It also claims the charges are frivolous.

This will not wash. If Mr Soren exited as a villain, Ms Bharati hasn't emerged a martyr. The charges against her are serious: rioting, instigating violence, and attempt to murder during a 1994 agitation to dislodge a Muslim organisation from the Idgah maidan in Hubli. The incident caused 6 deaths.

Ms Bharati ignored 100 summons and as many 18 non-bailable warrants. But she has no right to evade trial.

The BJP makes a curious distinction between "political" and "criminal" cases. It says its opponents are dacoits, murderers, etc., but its own leaders are charged with "political" offences -- like razing the Babri mosque.

This distinction is utterly spurious. The demolition was a horrible act, a vile communal crime, whose gravity was compounded by the mass lynchings that followed, leading to hundreds of deaths, especially in Mumbai. Such hate-acts are far more reprehensible than individual crimes. They must be more severely punished.

Ms Bharati's offence in Hubli falls within that category. It was part of the BJP's hate campaign to establish a toehold in Karnataka. Baba Budhangiri in Chikmagalur, and Hubli were its two planks. In the first case, the BJP-VHP tried to "capture" a shrine of a Muslim saint, worshipped by Hindus. In Hubli, it tried to occupy the Idgah maidan.

The most despicable part of this mobilisation was the abuse of the National Flag as a Hindutva symbol. This only makes the offence graver. But this is related to the Hindu communalists' false equation of themselves with the nation. They challenge the minorities to prove their "loyalty" -- by prostrating before the majority.

As Sumit Sarkar and others argue in Saffron Flags, Khaki Shorts (Orient Longman, 1993), this equation is characteristic of majoritarianism. It distorts the true nature of the national community, comprised of equal citizens. It is profoundly anti-democratic.

The BJP's top leaders owe their primary loyalty not to the Tricolour but to the RSS's triangular saffron flag. For decades, the RSS rejected the National Flag's green (read, "Islamic") colour-band and the (Buddhist) Ashoka Chakra.

The BJP cunningly made a threefold calculation in asking Ms Bharati to resign. First, this might help boost its demand that "tainted" RJD leaders like Mr Laloo Prasad and Mr Taslimuddin should quit. Second, the Tiranga Yatra from Hubli to Jallianwala Bagh may gather momentum.

Third, it would be rid of Ms Bharati herself. She has become a source of embarrassment for the BJP because of her family's antics.

The first two stratagems are a big gamble. It's unclear that many people will be taken in by the "tainted ministers" campaign and the flag-hoisting argument. They know how to demarcate "flag-hoisting" from communal incitement. Ironically, the only certainty is Ms Bharati's removal from power!

The law may be catching up with Mr Narendra Milosevic Modi too. The Supreme Court has ordered Gujarat to reopen 2,100 cases of violence (half the total), which were summarily closed on the pretext that the police could not trace the accused.

New evidence is emerging from the Nanavati-Shah commission hearings of Mr Modi's culpability. Officials' testimonies confirm that Mr Modi personally decided to bring the Godhra victims' bodies to Ahmedabad. Former state police chief K. Chakravarthi confesses he ordered his officers to investigate the "conspiracy angle" -- an implicit admission that the violence was pre-planned.

Other evidence is emerging too, from former Ahmedabad police officers P.C. Pande and M.K. Tandon, and additional director-general (intelligence) R.B. Sreekumar. This shows that the police reporting and law-and-order systems completely broke down from February 27 onwards.

Top police officials got to know about the Noroda-Patia and Gulberg Society incidents many hours after they occurred. Beat policemen were ordered not to report incidents to the headquarters as the communications system might get clogged!

Even more eloquent is Mr Sreekumar's 172-page affidavit which details the complicity of police officials in the violence. It says: "Officers at the decisive rung … ignored the specific instructions … [and got] direct verbal instructions from the … ruling party."

This evidence should be systematically collated and used in the trial courts to pin down the culprits. The Modi government cannot be expected to do this. It is the greatest culprit of all. The Centre must set up a new inquiry commission, and implead itself as a party in all the relevant litigation. The UPA owes this to the people of Gujarat and to our Constitution.

The UPA's Common Minimum Programme promised to "to preserve, protect and promote social harmony and to enforce the law"

to deal with all obscurantist and fundamentalist elements." Barring the announcement by Railway Minister Laloo Prasad of an inquiry into the Godhra incident, it has done little to bring justice to the people of Gujarat.

Gujarat, the greatest state-aided pogrom of a religious minority since Independence, did not even find a mention in Dr Manmohan Singh's first address to the nation. Nor did "secularism."

This void must be filled. Gujarat was a case of genocidal violence. No society can aspire to be civilised if it cannot punish genocide of its own citizens.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.