AHMADABAD, India _ Hindu nationalists won a crucial test of political support Sunday with a resounding victory in a state election, fought in the shadow of anti-Muslim riots that left more than 1,000 people dead in 2002.
The vote in Gujarat, in western India, was a personal victory for Narendra Modi, arguably India's most divisive politician, who was re-elected to the state's top job.
Throughout the often bitter campaign, Modi cast the election as a referendum on his rule _ a tenure best known for the riots, which began after a mysterious train fire killed 59 Hindu pilgrims. Many in India say Modi stood idly by as Hindu mobs butchered Muslims, who were blamed for the fire. The United States has refused to renew his visa because of the riots.
"This vote is a positive vote to bring back the government," he told thousands of supporters on Sunday. "All the negative propaganda used in the campaign has been rejected by the people."
With persistent talk of early elections, analysts had predicted a close race between Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, India's main opposition party, and the Congress party, which heads the federal government.
Some in Congress had even hoped to pull off an upset and unseat the BJP. Instead, the BJP won 117 seats in the 182-seat state assembly in elections held in two phases earlier this month, according results announced Sunday by the election commission. Congress won 62 seats, and independents took 3.
It was a key fight for the BJP in one of its last remaining strongholds. The party governed India from 1998 until 2004, but its national leadership is now in disarray and Hindu nationalism no longer has the ideological draw it had in the 1990s. Voters these days are more concerned with benefiting from India's economic boom, which has left wide swaths of the country behind.
BJP leaders in New Delhi, the capital, celebrated the victory, even though Modi's continued dominance in Gujarat makes it harder for the party to sell itself as an organization that can cut across religious and ideological fault lines in India and govern nationally.
"It is a big victory for the BJP and an indicator of how things are going to shape up in future," said senior BJP official M. Venkaiah.
Modi, clearly aware of what issues play in contemporary India, sought during the campaign to highlight Gujarat's economic strength _ the state reportedly attracted more than 25 percent of India's total foreign investment of $15.7 billion in the last fiscal year.
He cast himself as the common man, a teetotaler and one-time tea vendor well acquainted the everyday struggles of ordinary Indians. His supporters, for their part, were often seen wearing Modi masks.
But Modi also occasionally made the kind of statements that seemed to confirm the worst fears of his critics, who consider him a dangerous firebrand all too comfortable inciting India's Hindu majority against Muslims, who make up about 14 percent of the country's 1.1 billion people.
At one point, Modi said that an innocent Muslim man shot by the police months earlier deserved to be killed because he was a terrorist. That statement earned him a censure from India's election commission.
Congress leader Sonia Gandhi, too, was censured by the election commission for calling the Modi administration "peddlers of religion and death" during the campaign.
While the nationalists kept hold of their traditional bastion, few consider the party a serious national threat to Congress.
Still, Congress' poor showing in Gujarat could keep the party from calling snap national elections before the end of its term in 2009, giving the BJP time to get its house in order.
Although Congress leaders have said they would finish out their term, there has been consistent speculation they may call the early vote because of fierce opposition from its communist allies to a landmark nuclear energy deal with the United States.
As news of their victory spread, throngs of BJP supporters took to the streets to celebrate, setting off firecrackers and distributing sweets.
Congress conceded defeat, even calling the vote "a great victory" for Modi.
Still, Congress picked up 10 BJP seats and one independent seat, and it played down the significance of the nationalist victory to India's political future.
"The victory is certainly limited to Gujarat and a certain kind of divisive politics has worked there," Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi told reporters.
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