ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the events, communal conflicts and tensions that provided the context for the attack, and the difficulty religious groups and their leaders experience in navigating a treacherous middle path in such turmoil. Terror invaded paradise on 24 September 2002. Two men entered Akshardham in Gandhinagar, Gujarat carrying assault rifles and grenades, killing 33 people and injuring more than 70. The assault took place in the midst of political turmoil and intercommunal religious conflict in 2002. The prominence of the Bochasanwasi Swaminarayan Satsang and its Akshardham monument attracted the unwanted attention because the satsang is part of a Hindu revival in Gujarat. In some ways Akshardham was an unlikely target because Swaminarayan Hinduism teaches ahimsa and shares many of the values of Mahatma Gandhi, himself a native son of Gujarat. Swaminarayan teaching promotes nonviolence and religious tolerance. Sacred texts indicate that Swaminarayan had Muslims in his entourage in the early nineteenth century.
