the 400+-year-old Babri Mosque at AYODHYA in
Uttar Pradesh. According to the Sangh’s mythol-
ogy and grievance, the mosque stands upon the
ruins of a Hindu temple, rumored to be the birth-
place of RAMA, a Hindu god. The destruction of
the mosque was accompanied by systematic anti-
Muslim violence throughout India, concentrated
in Mumbai, for which the Srikrishna Commission
has held Hindu nationalists responsible.
The BJP gained power in India at the national
level at the head of a coalition of political parties
called the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
The NDA controlled the national government
until 2004, when the Congress-led United Pro-
gressive Alliance won elections at the national
level, though the BJP continued to rule in various
states, alone or within political coalitions.
In the spring of 2002, the torching of 58
Hindutva activists on a train near the town of
Godhra, Gujarat, set off a systematic and govern-
ment-backed massacre of Muslims throughout
the state. Immediately after the train fire, some of
the local-language press and state-level BJP lead-
ers insisted that local Muslims had conspired to
burn the train, though the Banerjee Commission
later declared this allegation to be unfounded.
Starting on February 28, violence broke out in
16 of Gujarat’s 24 districts, attributed by most to
Hindu nationalist groups. Muslim homes, busi-
nesses, and places of worship were destroyed
by large mobs armed with swords, tridents,
kerosene, and liquid gas canisters. Both girls and
women were subjected to sexual atrocities: gang
rape and collective rape, as well as sexual mutila-
tion with swords and sticks, before being burned
to death.
Independent fact-finding groups have placed
the number of dead at no fewer than 2,000, and
the number of displaced at 200,000, most of
whom were Muslims. Human rights observers
classified the events in Gujarat as “genocide” by
the standards of the United Nations Genocide
Convention of 1948. India’s National Human
Rights Commission charged the state government
with complicity at the “highest levels.” Police and
high-level BJP officials, according to fact-finding
reports, supported the violence through inaction
or active participation, including leaking electoral
rolls indicating the locations of Muslim residences
and businesses. Since the violence in Gujarat,
impunity has reigned, as reported by Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch. Several
high-profile cases were moved out of the state by
the Indian Supreme Court, because of the court’s
lack of confidence in the ability of Gujarat’s judi-
cial system to deliver justice for the survivors.
Since these incidents in Gujarat, groups in
India and the DIASPORA have begun to trace inter-
national political and financial support for Hindu
nationalist organizations. Two reports tracked the
funding of Hindu nationalist activities: the Cam-
paign to Stop Funding Hate released one report
on the activities of the India Development and
Relief Fund, a United States–based charity, and
Awaaz South Asia Watch released another report
on the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, a United King-
dom–based charity.
Sangh leaders have been quoted as promising
to strengthen the Hindutva movement in Orissa,
a state in eastern India, and in other parts of the
country. In Orissa, as of 2005, Hindutva already
has a strong network of Sangh organizations and
activists, who are reportedly carrying out forced
conversions of Christians and tribals to Hinduism,
destroying churches, committing selective mur-
ders, imposing social and economic boycotts of
minorities, and imposing a ban on cow slaughter,
which threatens the livelihoods of poor Muslims
and Dalits.Further reading: Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its
Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princ-
eton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993); Angana
P. Chatterji, “Memory—Mournings: The Biopolitics of
Hindu Nationalism,” in Angana P. Chatterji and Lubna
Nazir Chaudhry, eds. Contesting Nation: Gendered Vio-
lence in South Asia: Notes on the Postcolonial Present
(New Delhi: Zubaan Books, 2006); Thomas BlomHindu nationalism 187 J