NEW DELHI, India - Several thousand people marched to Parliament on Tuesday, waving flags and shouting slogans demanding an end to the sectarian violence in western India which has claimed some 900 lives.
Opposition parties and human rights groups organized the march to pressure Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to sack the top-elected official of Gujarat state.
The marchers were stopped by police before they reached the colonial, red sandstone Parliament complex. Inside, members were debating whether to censure the government for its handling of the Gujarat violence.
Many accuse Gujarat's Chief Minister Narendra Modi of failing to stop Hindu mobs from killing hundreds of Muslims.
Modi, who belongs to Vajpayee's Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, had initially condoned the killings, saying they were in reaction to the Muslim mob burning of a train carrying Hindus on Feb. 27. Sixty Hindus returning from a pilgrimage were killed in the train fire.
Since then, 905 people, mostly Muslims, have been killed in reprisal attacks and more than 1,000 Muslim businesses and homes destroyed.
"Sack Modi, save the nation," and, "Hindus, Muslims, brothers, brothers," read some of the placards carried by the crowd through the streets of the nation's capital.
"The situation in Gujarat is a warning that fascism is on the rise. Every Indian must defeat those who seek to divide this country on the basis of religion," said Vishwanath P. Singh, a former prime minister.
Many of the participants came from villages and small towns.
"Legal action should be taken against Modi. I have come to Delhi to make my voice heard," said Abrar Ahmad, a Muslim farmer who had traveled by bus from Barabanki, 425 kilometers (270 miles) southeast of New Delhi. "India is burning. I am an Indian first, a Muslim later."
Two months of sectarian clashes have triggered a debate on Hindu-Muslim relations in a country of more than 1 billion people. Hindus comprise 82 percent of the population; Muslims account for 12 percent.
"What has happened is dangerous. If Gujarat is burning today, tomorrow the rest of India will go up in flames," said Hemant Tewari, a government worker.