Betraying his anxiety over the possible tarnishing of his reputation further, the Prime Minister told the Bharatiya Janata Parliamentary Party meeting to get set to "defeat the nefarious designs of Digvijay Singh and company" in Madhya Pradesh. "We have to be cautious and counter this with an effective strategy especially in view of the coming Assembly elections," the Prime Minister said and called upon his party workers not to take the hostile propaganda lying down. An angry Vajpayee reportedly thundered at the meeting: "Political parties would do mischief in order to raise their stock. But why were the BJP cadres silent and not retaliating suitably to the charges against me and the party?"

Fearing a repetition in Madhya Pradesh of happenings in Ayodhya, where the Babri Masjid was razed to the ground by kar sevaks mobilised by Hindu fundamentalist organisations in 1992, the Muslim clerics are not sitting mum. They are already shouting from the housetops that there is no justification in undermining the status quo according to which Muslims are allowed to offer prayers every Friday and Hindus only once in a year on Basant Panchami day at the disputed monument maintained as a protected site by the Archaeological Survey of India. Voicing the opinion of the Muslim elite, N. Jamal Ansari wrote in the Radiance News Weekly: "The BJP has started talking about cultural nationalism without bothering to define it. In the past it used certain terms like Indianisation, Hindutva, etc. to capture power. All this is nothing but the downfall of our democratic polity."

What shape events will take in Dhar with possible repercussions all over the State will be clear only in the days to come. But already the disputed Bhojshala-Kamal Moula mosque has witnessed rioting and lathi-charges precipitated by a vain bid by the Hindu Jagran Manch activists to storm the shrine and open its locks. When they were not allowed to approach within 100 metres of the temple, they resorted to pelting stones at the police. The police resorted to a lathi charge and lobbed teargas shells. Two policemen and 22 Jagran Manch activists were injured. Several shops in the town were set on fire. The police arrested 150 Manch members including 50 women. Following the outbreak of violence on February 18, the town wore a deserted look although there was no curfew.

Now that fundamentalists have lit the communal fuse, the violence seems to spreading in the State. Two persons were reported killed, several injured and some buses set on fire in different parts of the State in the fallout of the Bhojshala lathi charge by the police. The BJP leader, Uma Bharati, called the State Chief Minister "a liar". The BJP spokesman in New Delhi, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, attacked the State Government for the lathi charge on people who had gone to Bhojshala to offer prayers. The Congress issued a statement accusing the BJP of trying to re-enact Gujarat in Madhya Pradesh where people had lived long in communal harmony. There are charges and counter-charges by political chieftains who have their eyes riveted on the outcome of the polls to be held later this year.

Obviously, troubled and fearing that the Dhar incidents may trigger communal warfare in the State, Chief Minister Digvijay Singh said those trying to vitiate the prevailing atmosphere of communal harmony in Madhya Pradesh would not be spared. He warned the BJP that it would not be allowed to repeat "another Gujarat" where the BJP had recently won the State Assembly election mainly due to the near-total communal polarisation of the electorate. The Congress President, Sonia Gandhi, provoked by the Hindu Jagran Manch tactics, charged the Bharatiya Janata Party with misusing Hinduism to polarise society. There is a lull in Madhya Pradesh now. But it looks like the proverbial lull before the outbreak of a major communal storm. The hardliner BJP activists at the moment are busy in swinging the electorate in their favour in Himachal Pradesh where elections are due to take place shortly. The hero of the BJP’s victory in Gujarat, Chief Minister Narendra Modi, is occupied in using his tried and tested slogans in other States to prepare ground for a BJP sweep in the entire country. One of the most experienced and seasoned BJP leaders, Uma Bharati, who is heading the party in Madhya Pradesh now, is formulating her strategy and once she starts unleashing her thunder, it would not be easy for Digvijay Singh to capture power for a third time in a row—he had won the Assembly elections in the State twice earlier. Like Ayodhya, which had been a major cause of dispute between Hindus and Muslims ever since the Babri Masjid was built here in the 16th century, the Bhojshala mosque complex had also been a source of tension between the two communities for long. Rival claims over the monument provoked communal clashes in 1944 and then again in 1984. In order to forestall trouble, the Government decided to hand over custody of the monument to the Archaeological Survey of India in 1952. Following protracted negotiations, the ASI decided to declare the monument open to the public on Friday for Namaz and once a year for Basant Panchami puja.