Word: gujarat
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...many ways, Gujarat is the best and worst of India. For years the state, which juts westward into the Arabian Sea, has been one of the most economically forward-looking regions in the country; its diamond-cutting and textile industries earn India hundreds of millions of dollars in exports. But Gujurat was also the scene of some of the worst sectarian violence since independence, when communal riots killed as many as 2,000 people - most of them Muslim...
...figure at the center of the election, and perhaps the most controversial politician in India, is Narendra Modi, Gujarat's chief minister. Modi, a member of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is hailed by his supporters as a modernizer who has built new roads, brought electricity and streetlights to villages and attracted new business to Gujarat. To his detractors, Modi will always be the man who stoked the sectarian tensions that made the 2002 riots possible. The riots followed a train car fire that killed dozens of Hindu pilgrims. Within hours of the blaze, later blamed...
...Assassin's Song is a more complex but ultimately less satisfying examination of similar turf. The central character, Karsan, is destined to be the latest in a centuries-long familial line to inherit the Shrine of the Wanderer, an important place of Sufi worship in India's Gujarat state. But as a young man he falls out with his father and loses his faith, escaping to North America instead. When he returns, after the riots that ripped apart Gujarat in 2002, Karsan is forced to re-examine his beliefs, his family and himself...
...Americana. In Tulsa, Okla., Jack Patel has lovingly refurbished the neon cactus in front of his Desert Hills Motel, and in Amarillo, Texas, Dipak and Sangita Patel decorated their Route 66 properties with rose gardens. The so-called Patel-motel phenomenon began in the 1970s when immigrants from Gujarat, India--where Patel is a common surname--started applying their business acumen to the U.S. motel market...
...other areas there is a more pragmatic approach. Health officials in Gujarat have distributed free condoms outside pornographic movie halls recently, despite the fact that pornographic films are illegal there. And, a few weeks ago, the Chandigarh Industrial and Tourism Development Corporation opened India's first "condom bar," a popular night spot featuring crystal bowls filled with free condoms. Here, at least, the buzz is for real: according to newspaper reports, the bar is packed most nights...