The ruling party won a sweeping victory today in state elections in western India – a landslide that could boost Hindu supremacists in national politics and challenge the nation’s secular traditions.

INDIA deployed thousands of troops to prevent an eruption of Hindu-Muslim rioting yesterday after gunmen attacked a major Hindu temple complex in a raid that left 32 people dead, most of them worshippers.

Police in India have arrested more than 18,500 Hindu nationalists in an effort to stop them defying a Supreme Court ban on a contentious religious ceremony.

India’s Supreme Court today ruled against Hindu nationalist demands to hold a symbolic prayer ceremony near the site of a razed 16th century mosque.

Government officials have confirmed that Gujarat is returning to normal after four days of riots that left 485 people dead.

Thousands of Indian army soldiers tried to control Hindu mobs in the western city of Ahamadabad today as the death toll in the country’s worst religious violence in a decade approached 300.

At least 246 people are now known to have died in two days of rioting by Hindu nationalists in the western Indian state of Gujarat.