On 28 February 2002, in Godhara, a little known railway station of Gujarat, in an unprecedented case of arson nearly fifty-eight passengers on the Sabarmati express lost their lives. Many of those who perished in this dreadful fire were volunteers of a militant Hindu nationalist organisation namely Vishwa Hindu Parishad (translated as World Hindu Council and popularly called VHP). These volunteers were returning home from a rally in Ayodhya where the VHP was trying to construct a Ram temple on the site of a sixteenth century mosque named after India's first Mughal emperor Babar.

The temple agitation, periodically orchestrated by Hindu nationalist organisations from 1989 onwards, has unfailingly provoked communal eruptions in the country resulting in large casualties. The February 2002 agitation was no exception to this trend: only this time the stakes were higher. As soon as news of the murderous arson spread, the VHP cashed in on the tragedy by calling for a total strike in Gujarat. The strike escalated into widespread wellorchestrated attacks on Muslim minorities, worsening – in the process – the relationship between India and Pakistan, already tense in the wake of the Kargil war, nuclear tests, and terrorist assaults in New Delhi and Kashmir. The Indian media, and politicians opposed to Hindu nationalist organisations, and human rights activists alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party, the ruling political party in Gujarat and a sister Hindu nationalist organisation of the VHP, had used state power to assist the attacks on Gujarati Muslims.