Prime Minister Vajpayee is the one to worry most about what could happen in India. He is in charge of a multifarious 24-party coalition which includes neo-liberals, regionalists, nationalists and racists/casteists. The BJP is much the same as the Conservative Party in the UK - middle-class, pro-capitalist and moderately nationalist, with some extremists on the fringes. However, the ones to worry about are the RSS, which is the BJP's foot soldiers which want to stir up communal violence against Muslims, and the Shiv Sena (God's Army), a Hindu extremist group in government with the BJP which operates a terrorist organisation like Combat 18.

At the moment, RSS and Shiv Sena are arming villagers with knives, supposedly to give 'spiritual protection'. But everyone knows the fundamentalists are provoking highly conservative villagers to kill Muslims and Christians. However, Indian Muslims are generally liberal-minded and moderate and are mainly located in urban areas and attacks have been localised and confined mainly to rural areas. The fact that the Pakistan-backed extremists have decided to storm parliament in a killing spree is very worrying as Muslims in cosmopolitan Delhi could be vulnerable to slaughter.

Don't underestimate the killing fervour that can be unleashed in India. The assassination of the despotic Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984 saw several thousand Sikhs massacred in Delhi in three days of civil unrest and rioting. If the Pakistani military's pro-Taliban Kashmiri terrorist allies had managed to kill someone important yesterday, you can be sure that the Muslims would have met a similar fate as the Sikhs in 1984. Yet, the war on Afghanistan, the growing tensions over Kashmir and yesterday's terrorist attacks on parliament could erupt into communal violence.

However, the BJP and Vajpayee are completely unable to act. If they expell fascists from the government, they will be committing political suicide and could fuel more extremist politics. The BJP came to power due to a wave of revulsion towards the despotic corruption of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty. But it has also come under criticism for corruption, particularly involving Defence Minister George Fernandes, who was revealed by Tehelka.com to be involved in illicit arms deals. The BJP is a hostage to extremists and the more it is afflicted by corruption scandals, the more likely it will try to use the Kashmiri issue to appease the extremists and the more vulnerable Indian Muslims will be.

Your friend has a good reason to be worried, particularly with the passing of the Prevention of Terrorism Ordnance (POTO), which is very similar to the oppressive Terrorism Act 2000 and the recent anti-terrorist laws passed in the UK.

Equally, life is getting bad for Hindus and Buddhists in Bangladesh, following the election in November of an alliance headed by Begum Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh National Party and including the fascist pro-Taliban Jamaat-e Islami Bangladesh. Religious and ethnic minorities are facing extreme persecution by followers of Zia. Moreover, the secular centre-left opposition leader Sheikh Hasina was arrested today on charges of corruption, leaving Zia and her government completely free to run rampant over Bangladesh. Zia is also supporting Assamese separatists in India, who are engaged in a terrorist campaign.

As for other Indian news sources, why not try
Indymedia India -  http://india.indymedia.org
Asian Age -  http://www.asianageonline.com/
Times of India -  http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/
Communist Party of India (Marxist) -  http://www.cpim.org/
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (Liberation) - http://www.cpiml.org/

The CPI(M) is in power in West Bengal and Kerela while the CPI-MLL is a Naxalite (Indian anarchist) movement.