End of an Illusion

How corruption and divisive ideology systematically eroded the Indian dream. An extract

At 7:43 a.m. on February 27, 2002, the Sabarmati Express from Ayodhya pulled into the Godhra Junction railway station in eastern Gujarat. On board were kar sevaks (religious volunteers) returning frustrated from Ayodhya. They had been unable to begin building their much-cherished temple to Lord Ram on the site where frenzied kar sevaks like them had demolished the Babri Masjid in December 1992. Many kar sevaks belonged to the Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of the VHP, the principal instigator of the fever to build a temple in place of the masjid. These angry Hindus returning form Ayodhya had picked fights along the journey and were itching form more.

At the Godhra Junction railway station platform, some of the younger kar sevaks refused to pay a cigarette vendor and threw tea in the face of a tea vendor. Allegedly, they also molested a girl. Godhra was a Muslim-majority town, where Muslims lived in ghetto-like conditions. After the train moved away from the station, Muslims threw bottles, stones, and burning rags at the train cars. One car caught fire, and fifty-nine kar sevaks perished.

According to one account, rather than the angry Muslims outside, passengers on board accidentally ignited the cooking fuel they were carrying. But, in the fog of what precisely happened, a competing narrative, that the Muslims had conspired to kill the kar sevaks, proved powerful. Over the next several days, Hindus slaughtered Muslims throughout the state of Gujarat. Approximately two thousand people died, the vast majority of whom were Muslims. With the police standing to the side, young Hindu men, often in saffron-colored headbands that signified allegiance to Hindutva, wantonly destroyed the lives and livelihoods of Muslims. They brutally raped Muslim women. Many of the Hindutva marauders, the anthropologist Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi has written, belonged to a “generation of underprivileged and upwardly