introduction. 5
ence to ahimsa,nonviolence, and Pramukh Swami made history in September 2002
when he urged his followers not to take vengeance on Muslim militants who killed
thirty-two people and injured scores more in an attack on Swaminarayan’s most im-
portant monument, the sparkling new temple and religious theme park called Ak-
shardham, just outside Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat. People listened: not a
single Muslim life was lost.
This presented a stunning contrast to the many Muslims killed—and many more
rendered homeless and indigent—in a campaign condoned and supported by the
Gujarat state government earlier the same year. The party in power was the Hindu
revivalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is particularly strong in Gujarat, and
the mobs marshaled by the party and its ideological confreres were avenging an at-
tack on a train filled with Hindu nationalists that made a stop in the city of Godhra,
Gujarat, on February 19. Fifty-eight people died in a fire that swept through one
bogie of that train while it stood in Godhra station. Most early reports said a Mus-
lim mob on the platform had torched the bogie as a Hindu-Muslim argument esca-
lated out of control. The Hindu activists on the train had been returning from the
fervor of a rally in Ayodhya, the city in North India that is widely regarded as the
birthplace of the god-king Rama. They were trying to pressure the government to
remove obstacles standing in the way of the construction of a massive temple on the
spot believed to be the place where Rama was born, the very spot where carefully
organized cadres of young Hindus had destroyed a sixteenth-century mosque in
- A great many Muslims—and a few Hindus—had been killed in rampages that
followed that attack, too.
But it ’s far from certain that Muslims really did torch the train in Godhra in re-
sponse to insults from Hindu-chauvinist pilgrims. Early investigations reported that
the fire actually started at a particular seat inside the bogie—possibly ignited by a
kerosene burner. Hindus claiming to have seen things with their own eyes rejected
those conclusions. As for Pramukh Swami, he didn’t care how that issue or any
other in this long chain of violence would be adjudicated. He just said it was time to
stop, and the weight of his authority was such that people paid attention. Now he
was in Bangalore on a much happier mission.
The New Year also brought other news of violence—this time in the western
state of Maharashtra. Like several other Indian regions that claim a language and
history of their own, Maharashtra has spawned a number of chauvinist organiza-
tions committed to singing the region’s glory and defending its honor. Much of this
has been done in overtly Hindu terms, portraying Muslims as the enemy. But other
“foreigners” also count—South Indians and Brahmins, since their roots are not