It may seem a puzzle why the Uttar Pradesh administration hurriedly cremated, in darkness, the 19-year-old Dalit girl of Hathras, who died because of a brutal gang-rape. Yet the haze of incomprehension would lift once you rewind to February 27, 2002. On that day, a coach of the Sabarmati Express, bringing back pilgrims from Ayodhya to Gujarat, was set on fire in Godhra. Fifty-nine passengers were charred to death. Instead of handing over the bodies to their relatives in Godhra, the administration decided to transport them to Sola Civil Hospital, in Ahmedabad, where a large crowd assembled the following day, frothing with anger.

This decision was identified, in contemporary media accounts, as the trigger for Ahmedabad and the state to erupt. The chief minister of Gujarat then was Narendra Modi, who surfed the wave of Hindu anger to grow from strength to strength and the Bharatiya Janata Party went on to acquire an aura of invincibility in the state.