Communalism has been an important theme in Indian politics since the 1880s. During the first three decades after independence, even after the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947, no political force gained substantial power in the name of Hinduism. From the mid-1980s there has been a resurgence of a belligerent and new kind of Hindu nationalism in India's public life and in its political institutions. In the main, the Hindu nationalist movement has defined itself in opposition to Islam and Muslims. Hindu revivalists have promoted a claim that the Muslim minority in India threatens Hindus and have sought to establish India as a primarily Hindu nation (rashtra), based on a notion of Hindu ethos, values and religion. The ideology and politics of Hindutva – the quality of being a Hindu – was accompanied by a rapid increase in largescale communal (Hindu–Muslim) riots in the 1980s and 1990s. Major communal violence spread throughout India in 1990 and following the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque at Ayodhya in 1992.

Gujarat, one of India's most prosperous states, has been vital for the growth of communalism. Since the mid-1980s Gujarat became the site of recurring communal violence. The state turned into a nerve centre for the Hindu nationalist movement and has come to be seen as the Hindutva laboratory. The rising communalism in Gujarat culminated in a massacre of Muslims in many parts of the state in February 2002.