The BJP's Rise to Power

The 2002 Gujarat Pogrom

On February 27, 2002, a train car filled with Hindu pilgrims caught fire at the Godhra railway station, killing 59 people. The cause of the fire and the events surrounding it became the subject of intense political and legal controversy, with Muslims being blamed for the horrific event. In the days and weeks that followed, Hindu extremist mobs sought “revenge” for the deaths of the pilgrims by carrying out an anti-Muslim massacre over the next several weeks.

Nearly 2,000 Muslims were killed during the pogrom. Hindu militant mobs rampaged cities and villages alike, amid horrifying reports of women, children, and men being burned alive, dismembered, and electrocuted. Muslim women and girls were subjected to widespread sexual violence and mutilation, while 20,000 Muslim-owned businesses and homes across the state were destroyed. Among the most notorious of these massacres took place in the Gulbarg Society neighborhood, where Muslim parliamentarian Ehsan Jafri and 69 others taking refuge inside his home were murdered by mobs. Jafri himself was dismembered in front of the people he was trying to keep safe.

During the attacks on Gujarat's Muslim communities, no serious effort was taken by police departments to stop the violence and, according to numerous reports of those who contacted a police department for help, personnel often were not dispatched to stop the spread of violence.

Instead, as victims reported, police officers claimed that they were not obligated to protect Muslims. Former law enforcement official Sanjiv Bhatt reported that officers, per the words of Modi, were told in a meeting to “let the Hindus vent their anger” in retaliation to the Godhra train massacre. In other cases, police officers even directly aided mobs towards their violent objectives. Reports released by Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations in the aftermath of the pogroms revealed that the Modi administration wasn't merely negligent in delivering justice to victims or its handling of the violence, but was actively complicit in the state crisis. Several articles of evidence illustrate unmistakable connections between BJP officials and the armed mobs on the ground, who represented Hindutva's paramilitary organizations like the RSS, Bajrang Dal, and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).

Although Narendra Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat, denied complicity in the massacre at Gulberg Society, a survivor testified that, according to former MP Ehsan Jafri, a desperate phone call made to Modi was met with verbal abuse. As Human Rights Watch found, voter and address lists used to carry out attacks were obtained from none other than municipal government records, and in some instances, BJP politicians arrived at the scene of an orchestrated attack to support mobs. Within police departments, personnel reportedly faced pressure from state authorities to refrain from making arrests, minimize charges, or simply drop investigations into the accused if they had ties to the BJP.

Independent media organization Tehelka also captured video of Hindu militants declaring that the attacks had Modi's blessings. The outlet also documented other proof of Modi's direct involvement in the killings, including on-camera confessions of mob leaders who allege they were allowed a three-day timeline to carry out their objectives. Although Modi himself was never convicted by the Indian judiciary for his role in the violence — and in fact was given a highly contested “clean chit” — evidence collected by Indian and international groups alike demonstrate that the BJP supported perpetrators of violence and are accused of a cover-up to this day.

In 2005, the United States government — then under the Bush administration — denied Modi a diplomatic visa, referencing his failure to mobilize state institutions in counteracting the spread of violence. The official statement also cited the Indian National Human Rights Commission's report, which noted “a comprehensive failure on the part of the state government [Gujarat] to control the persistent violation of rights of life, liberty, equality, and dignity of the people of the state.”

In an interrogation by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) set up by the Supreme Court, Modi frequently cited the Gujarat Pogrom as a natural and justified response to the earlier murder of 60 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya to Godhra. Modi also tried to acquit himself of the numerous proofs signifying his role in the statewide violence.

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What is happening is a chain of action and reaction. What I want is that there should be no action and no reaction.

In 2004, the Supreme Court ordered a review of 2,000 dismissed cases. Judicial reviews only produced investigations for 40 police officers and the arrests of 640 accused, with actual convictions even more scarce. Unsuccessful prosecution can be attributed to court interference, in which witnesses, under duress, retracted their testimonies and justices acted partially.

One such example is the treatment of the initial testimonials given by senior police officers Sanjiv Bhatt, R.B. Sreekumar, and then-Home Minister of Gujarat, Haren Pandya.

The Indian Supreme Court, in 2022, dismissed allegations brought by Ehsan Jafri's widow, Zakia, against Modi and 60 other BJP officials of the 2002 administration. Justices alleged that these were made on the basis of the testimonies of Bhatt, Pandya, and Sreekumar, which they characterized as unreliable and conspiratorial.

Bhatt and Sreekumar face ongoing punishment by the BJP administration via the higher courts, which have brought or revived legal cases against them. Bhatt, in 2018, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after courts reinvestigated a 1992 case in which he — then a police superintendent in a district of Gujarat — was said to have falsely implicated an individual in a drug scandal. Pandya, a year after alleging Modi's direct involvement in the Gujarat pogroms, was assassinated under mysterious circumstances — a killing in which many surmise the far-right political establishment's involvement.

Other cases, like that of a lethal mob attack on a local business — Best Bakery — had to be transferred to the Maharashtra court due to the severity of witness intimidation. In the rare instances where justice was facilitated, the majority of convictions of the accused occurred outside of the Gujarat High Court, with Supreme Court oversight of the trials. Per the statement of Deputy Asia Director of Human Rights Watch, Meenakshi Ganguly: “where justice has been delivered in Gujarat, it has been in spite of the state government, not because of it.”

Modi was never convicted by an Indian court for criminal responsibility for the 2002 violence. In 2012, a Supreme Court-appointed SIT claimed that there was “insufficient evidence” to prosecute Modi and others for their role in the pogrom. The Supreme Court later upheld the SIT's findings in 2022, rejecting a petition challenging the decision to nationwide outrage.

Despite these testimonials and numerous other proofs, Modi continues to deny responsibility for both his complicity in the pogrom as well as any judicial interference. His supporters in both India and abroad, meanwhile, have worked to whitewash the pogrom by claiming Muslims were responsible for the Godhra train fire, and that the subsequent mass rapes and massacres were a logical — and in fact tolerant — response by Hindus.

One such example can be found in Savera's report, The Global VHP's Trail of Violence, which describes how Gaurang Vaishnav, a Modi supporter and then-General Secretary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA), justified the violence:

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In an 11-page article justifying the pogroms and urging further action, [Vaishnav] blamed the violence on Muslims, and wrote that the fact that the violence was limited to 40 cities, towns and villages was “a measure of Hindu tolerance.” “Hindus of Gujarat,” he wrote, “have not killed in the name of religion. Hindus have reacted to the ‘Aat-tayees’ as any society would after years of impotence and tolerance ... And our scriptures are very categorical about the punishment to be meted out to the Aat-tayees. It is punishment by death.”

In an interview in 2025, Modi dismissed the 2002 Gujarat riots as simply another episode of communal violence in the state, minimizing its enduring impact on victims. He held that investigations into his administration's culpability weren't in pursuit of justice, but politically motivated by the opposition party.

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At that time, our political opponents were in power at the Centre, and it was natural for them to try and pin all the blame on us.

Subsequent Rise to Power and First Election as Prime Minister

Modi served as Chief Minister of Gujarat for three consecutive terms. During the years leading up to the 2014 national election, the BJP experienced a series of electoral victories in state legislatures and expanded its national support base. In 2013, Modi was chosen to lead the BJP's campaign for the Lok Sabha, India's lower house of Parliament, effectively making him the party's prime ministerial candidate.

Modi campaigned on a platform emphasizing economic growth, development, and his record of promoting business investment in Gujarat. During this period, the BJP also cultivated extensive relationships with major corporate donors and business interests. At the same time, Modi had developed a powerful base among Hindutva organizations and supporters. To many within the movement, his record in Gujarat — including his government's handling of the 2002 violence — was seen not as a political liability, but as evidence of his willingness to advance the movement's Hindu supremacist agenda.

On May 26, 2014, Narendra Modi was sworn in as Prime Minister after the BJP won an outright majority in the Lok Sabha. His election marked a major turning point in Indian politics. For the first time in decades, a party rooted in the broader Sangh Parivar had secured a parliamentary majority on its own, giving Modi's government unprecedented political power to advance its vision of India.

What followed was a new era in which Hindutva moved further from the margins of Indian politics and increasingly into the mainstream of state institutions, public discourse, and everyday life. Modi's government also strengthened ties with Hindu nationalist networks abroad, helping expand the global reach of the movement.

The 2014 election therefore represented more than a change in government. It marked the transformation of Hindutva from a powerful political movement into the dominant force governing the world's largest democracy.