AFTER shaming India with the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, the Bharatiya Janata Party and its patron bodies in the Sangh Parivar sought to project a new moderation. Propelled to power by their flagrant communal campaign in March 1998, Hindutva formations claimed that they would conduct themselves in a responsible manner and respect the country's Constitution and its laws.

However, communal incidents that occurred from March 1998 onwards reveal that precisely the reverse has been true. Although there were no major communal riots during this period, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Bajrang Dal, the Shiv Sena and other Hindutva forces were engaged in the systematic intimidation of minority communities. This compilation by is far from comprehensive. Put together from newspaper reports, human rights investigations and documentation prepared by independent and community groups, the list excludes dozens of claims of communal violence and instances of hate propaganda which appeared to lack integrity, precision or clarity. Programmes such as the communal and caste-biased encounters engineered by the BJP in Uttar Pradesh and the Shiv Sena in Mumbai were left out altogether because of difficulties in ascertaining exactly which killings were motivated by religious hate.

The scores of specific manifestations of hate politics that havebeen compiled range from outright violence to propagandistic activity. The incidents give an insight into the Hindu Right's current agenda. Attacks on Muslims account for just over a quarter of the total. This marks a shift from the pattern of single-minded attacks on Muslims that spearheaded the Hindutva campaign in the early 1990s. Only one incident - in Jammu and Kashmir - involved loss of life to Muslims. The vast majority of attacks, in which damage to property and injuries were common, were aimed at Christians. In one incident VHP members attacked a group of human rights activists, mistaking them for missionary workers.