Ahmedabad, India - The cellphones of right-wing Hindu nationalist party volunteers in the western state of Gujarat trill with songs of homage to the achievements of Chief Minister Narendra Modi, set to the notes of traditional folk music.
"There is development! There are better roads! And the chief minister is the son of the soil! A strong man and decisive!" the ring tone sings, looping over and over, until someone picks up.
Modi's party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, has chosen the theme of economic progress as its key campaigning tool as it prepares for crucial state polls that start Dec. 11.
Five years after more than 1,000 Muslims were killed here - beaten, hacked and burned alive - as riots swept through this state, the shadow of the Gujarat carnage hangs over the election campaign but is barely mentioned, with both Modi and the opposition Congress Party wary of confronting the subject head-on.
A cult figure to his followers, a pariah to most outside his party, Modi, 57, is India's most controversial politician. His supporters hope he will be the man to revitalize the BJP, still struggling since its defeat in the 2004 general elections.
Political opponents, and even members of his own party, describe him as a ruthless, authoritarian leader. India's Supreme Court, in a 2004 judgment on the riots, which happened while Modi was already chief minister, censured him as "a modern Nero who watched while Gujarat burned." A year later, the United States revoked his visa, on the grounds that he was responsible for "severe violations of religious freedom."
The right-wing columnist Swapan Dasgupta wrote in an essay defending Modi last week: "No Indian public figure in living memory has been subjected to as much vilification as has the chief minister of Gujarat." He noted that the politician was "routinely called a 'fascist' and a 'mass murderer.' "
With polls suggesting the result could go either way, the outcome of the election campaign in Gujarat will be scrutinized by the political elite in Delhi as a test of the national strength of India's two main parties. A Congress victory would be a much-needed boost to a government mired in difficulties, with major initiatives like its flagship nuclear deal with the United States blocked by coalition partners. If Modi wins, his chances of taking over his party's leadership would be enhanced.
Despite the reluctance among politicians to address the massacres of 2002, the worst sectarian violence since the partition from Pakistan in 1947, they have not been forgotten. The investigative weekly magazine Tehelka recently published new details of the role played by Modi's party, and allied Hindu groups, in the killings of Gujarat's Muslims during the riots that broke out days after 59 Hindus were burned to death on a train as they returned home from a pilgrimage site.
At the time the fire was blamed on Muslim extremists; later an inquiry by the Railways Ministry ruled that it was an accident.
An undercover reporter videotaped senior police officers and politicians boasting about their role in the killings. Members of extremist Hindu groups allied to Modi detailed how they burned Muslims, raped their wives and destroyed their homes, with the sanction of the police. Haresh Bhatt, a BJP politician, told the reporter that Modi himself had told him they had three days "to do whatever we wanted."
"After three days, he asked to stop, and everything came to a halt," Bhatt said on camera.
At a national level the Tehelka report caused a sensation, but in the BJP's head office in Ahmedabad the subject is dismissed as old history.
Modi's image makers have advised him to rebrand himself. When he last sought re-election, in 2002, soon after the riots, he fought on a platform of Hindutva, the trademark Hindu nationalism of the BJP, which calls for Hindu unity and fans fears among his core Hindu supporters about the presence of their Muslim neighbors.
Now he is at pains to promote a more acceptable face. Everything about the campaign is deliberately modern, showcasing a new India and a "vibrant" Gujarat. In addition to the ring tones, multimedia volunteers have uploaded clips of Modi's most rousing speeches on YouTube. Analysts say the Hindutva card will be played only if all else fails.
Modi's government has hired the American lobbying firm Apco to promote the attractions of Gujarat to international investors. Relations with the United States, however, remain strained. Some 40 percent of all Indian-Americans in the United States are from Gujarat originally, according to the U.S. Embassy, but officials said that, even if Modi became party leader, it would be difficult to see how Washington could change its stance towards him.
The Congress Party is also wary of campaigning on the issue of the riots, for fear of alienating its own Hindu supporters. The party's leader, Sonia Gandhi, described Modi's government as "merchants of death" in a speech on Saturday, but local politicians are under instructions to focus on rebutting the development claims, noting that large numbers of Gujarat farmers have fallen so deeply into debt that they have resorted to suicide, and arguing that the fate of the "aam aadmi" - the common man - has worsened.
Last week, flanked by two new shopping malls and surrounded by images of lotus blossoms, the party symbol, Modi began his campaign with a speech to party workers, instructing them that he should be judged on the state's economic achievements.
He made no reference to Hindutva, and only hinted at the Tehelka report, declaring: "The more muck you throw at it, the more the lotus will flower."
Beneath the watchful eye of armed guards in black uniforms and berets, he raised a silver sword above his head and shouted: "I am passionate about Gujarat! Gujarat will win!"
Modi's older brother, Somabhai Modi, who was listening to the speech, said the allegations in Tehelka were no longer relevant.
"Communal harmony has been restored in a nice way," he said. "In the last few years brotherhood has developed between Hindus and Muslims."
This is not an argument subscribed to by the human rights campaigners who offer support to the state's 9 percent Muslim population, many of whom now live in ghettoes away from Hindu areas of Ahmedabad.
"There is an apparent feeling of normalcy, but there is an underbelly of hate and prejudice and violence which can explode at any time," said the Reverend Cedric Prakash, a Jesuit priest.
"It is a big lie to say that the state has not been polarized. You cannot be a Muslim and buy a house or a business or a shop in an up-market part of the city. No one will sell it to you."
The rehabilitation homes for Muslims who lost their houses and businesses in the riots are clustered on the city's edge in the colony of Citizen Nagar, cloaked in haze from a massive waste dump smoldering barely 50 yards from their doors. The air is foul-smelling, and parents say their children are plagued by respiratory ailments.
Paid for with donations from Muslims in south India, the dwellings lack piped water, sanitation, roads and easy access to schools, health care and jobs. Water is pumped by hand from the ground, and residents believe it is tainted by chemicals from the dump.
Rabiya Mansoori, whose home was burned down during the riots, said Muslims still felt marginalized. "Whatever we had has been taken away," she said.
Feroza Banu, 22, whose husband was shot and killed by the police during the rioting, was angry that the massacre had been removed from the political agenda.
"I believe that the government was responsible for this," she said. "The police wouldn't have acted without support from above. They were shooting anyone with a beard."
She said she had seen none of the advertised benefits of development.
"As long as people are staying in ghettoes, we cannot be happy," she said. "We are all fearful and suspicious of each other."