As the fiery communal riots in the Indian state of Gujarat shift from the cities to the villages, the Hindu-led central government has begun to assess the damage to India's image and its own ability to govern.

The death toll thus far is more than 400, including the 58 who perished in the town of Godhra on Jan. 27, when a Muslim mob set fire to a train carrying more than 1,000 Hindu activists. But it could rise even higher, as Hindu activists seek revenge in Muslim shops, neighborhoods, or towns.

Cracks are appearing in the coalition government led by the Hindu-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has governed India since 1998. While the BJP was elected primarily for its fiscal restraint, it has also given substantial support to radical Hindu causes.

In the end, it is this social agenda that poses the greatest threat to the BJP's continued rule and moral authority.

"They have a movement of fringe ideologues who support the BJP the way the Christian right supports the Republicans in the US," says Ashish Nandy, political analyst at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi. "Personally, I suspect now the ideological conservatives of the Hindu right will try to calm things down. They know that if the regime falls, their situation will be much worse."

Figuring out how to put out the flames of Gujarat would challenge even a strong and stable government, let alone one as precarious as the current BJP coalition. The BJP was weakened by last month's state elections, making it even more reliant on its more secular coalition partners. Those partners are pushing the BJP leadership to give up its Hindu social agenda, or else lose their support.

"Our political parties do nothing beyond struggling for power," said Defense Minister George Fernandes to reporters while touring the riot-stricken city of Ahmadabad in Gujarat this weekend. Mr. Fernandes belongs to another coalition party, the Samata Party. "There is no civic leadership. There are no tall men around."

No parties have talked openly of withdrawing from the governing coalition, but privately, they have told Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee that their continued support depends on his ability to rein in the Hindu right.

In Ahmadabad, after nearly 24 hours delay, the police now seem to be bringing the rioters under control. But it is clear the wounds of communalism will take years to heal. In the commercial and political capital of Gujarat, Hindu fanatics carrying tridents and kerosene razed more than 26 mosques, and then performed "purification" rites over the rubble, leaving behind statues of the monkey god Hanuman.

Some observers say the state government, led by Gujarat chief minister and BJP member Narendra Modi, was deliberately slow in coming to the aid of embattled minorities. Many locals say that the police looked the other way as Hindu-led mobs burned and looted Muslim shops and properties. Some witnesses say police did a little looting themselves.

"It's hard to imagine that such a government wasn't aware of all the buildup to this tension," says Mushirul Hasan, a professor of history at Jamia Millia University in New Delhi. "In every case, since the train attack, Muslims have been killed, Muslim property has been identified, targeted, looted, and ransacked. Why did they allow this to happen?"

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