Fears for Secular India After Bjp Win Landslide in Gujurat

India lurched sharply to the right yesterday when its ruling Hindu nationalist party won a landslide victory at the polls in the western state of Gujarat, after the most contentious election campaign in modern Indian history.

The Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) won 126 seats (up from 117), humiliatimg the moderate Congress party which won just 51. The result gives the BJP a two-thirds majority in the new 182-seat state assembly.

The victory is a personal triumph for Gujarat's controversial BJP leader, Narendra Modi, who is expected to be sworn in again as chief minister later today. Earlier this year, Mr Modi presided over the worst riots in India for a decade when Hindu gangs burned, raped and killed more than 2,000 people in Gujarat, most of them Muslims.

In the run-up to the polls, Mr Modi gleefully exploited his role in the carnage. Human rights groups accused his administration of encouraging rioters. His uncompromising message of Hindutva (Hindu fundamentalism) may have appalled India's secular intellectuals but it seems to have gone down well with Gujarat's Hindu voters.

The BJP made big gains in areas worst hit by the riots, where Muslim minority businesses were systematically destroyed. The only area to resist the BJP onslaught was Kutch, the scene of a devastating earthquake two years ago.

Last night, analysts were weighing up whether the BJP's victory meant that the party - after a series of defeats - was on course to win the Indian general election in 2004.

There are also crucial polls in 10 Indian states next year, including Congress-run Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

"It is depressing. The man who presided over a pogrom of Muslims has used it as a successful electoral strategy," Ramachandra Guha, a writer and political analyst, told the Guardian last night. "This will make Muslims less secure and drive them into the arms of their own fundamentalists. Secular India is in trouble."

Some observers insisted that the result would not be repeated elsewhere. "I don't think this means the BJP will win in other parts of the country. But the opposition needs to get its act together," analyst Mahesh Rangarajan said.

But India's moderate BJP prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, will now come under intense pressure from hardliners and his Hindu revivalist allies to utilise Gujarat-style tactics elsewhere.

"Now politics in India will be based on Hindutva ," declared Praveen Togadia, of the extremist World Hindu Council.

During the campaign, Mr Modi proclaimed that only he could rescue Gujarat's 50 million people from neighbouring Islamic Pakistan. His officials went further, accusing Indian Muslims - 13% of the population - of being pro-Pakistan.

Gujarat's Muslims responded by voting en masse for Congress, although they account for only 9% of voters. Last night, the defeated opposition leader, Shankersinh Vaghela, admitted his party had been swept away by pro-Hindu sentiment, but said the BJP had resorted to "communal tactics".

The result is a big blow to the president of Congress, Sonia Gandhi, the widow of the Indian former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. After losing the last general election in 1999, Mrs Gandhi appeared to have got the better of her critics.

Meanwhile, BJP supporters dressed in orange robes celebrated last night in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's main city and the scene of the worst rioting earlier this year. There were a few isolated incidents of violence, in the city and the state.

The BJP's general secretary, Arun Jaitley, tried yesterday to strike a moderate note, saying the party had won because it had delivered good governance.

Western diplomats took a more pessimistic view. "This is very bad news," one said.