Muslims and the Marginalized in India Increasingly Live in a Shadow of Fear

India's western state of Gujarat, where Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of nonviolence, was born, also has a long history of communal violence. The most recent case of large-scale violence in the state was in 2002 when inter-communal riots resulted in the killing of close to a thousand Muslims and over two hundred Hindus.

Narendra Modi, now the prime minister, was Gujarat's chief minister then. He was accused of initiating and condoning the violence. The backlash against him was swift, from within the country as well as internationally. The U.S. government took the unusual step of declaring him a persona non grata. Criticism came even from within his own party: the prime minister at the time said that the riots were "a blot on [the] nation's forehead and ... grievously harmed India's image in the eyes of the world."

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