The large-scale massacre of Muslims in February-March 2002 in Gujarat was a watershed in the history of independent India. So, too, was what followed. While investigating violations in situations of severe state repression, from Bastar to Kashmir, human-rights teams in India had never before been afraid of the masses. But the hostility of the 'ordinary people' that met investigators in Gujarat was palpable, particularly in villages such as Sanjeli and Anjanwa. These were agents of neither the ubiquitous state nor of villainous industrialists: these were 'common people', suddenly on the brink of attacking human-rights teams perceived as 'minority appeasers'.
Given the collaboration of the state machinery in the killings in Gujarat, Muslims fled to areas where they came to make up sizable sections of the population. But there proved to be no safety, even in numbers. Sanjeli, for instance, in Dahod District, had 500 Muslim households, constituting about 40 percent of the population. After the 27 February 2002 burning at Godhra railway station of two train compartments carrying kar sevaks (volunteers) returning from Ayodhya, Sanjeli was attacked by a mob of more than 25,000 people – a horde that, for the first time, included the large-scale participation of Adivasis. The rallying cries were: Muslims despoil our women! and One hundred Bhil women violated in Sanjeli alone!
The massacres of Muslims in residential colonies such as Naroda-Patiya and Gulbarg Society in Ahmedabad were undertaken by mobs likewise numbering between 20,000 and 25,000, largely with the approval of the state's Hindu community. This support likewise manifested itself in the subsequent assembly elections, and the "peoples' verdict" of returning the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government to power. This victory was subsequently used as a sledgehammer with which to silence critics. In such a situation, it becomes impossible to refuse to see the participation of a sizable section of the common people in a fascist agenda.
The agenda is undoubtedly fascist, not merely fundamentalist. Within any religion, 'fundamentalism' literally connotes the strict maintenance of orthodox beliefs and fundamental doctrines. Christian fundamentalism would thus require a literal reading of the Bible, including a belief in the 'virgin birth' and the second coming of Christ. Islamic fundamentalism would look to a return to the principles and practices of early Islam, as patterned on the 7th-century community established by Mohammad at Medina. Similarly, Hindu fundamentalism could be a revitalisation of sorts – through the return to an imaginary ram rajya, or a golden age during the reign of Lord Ram.