IN 2002, when Narendra Modi was chief minister of Gujarat, Hindu mobs ran riot, raping and murdering Muslims and burning them alive. Over 1,000 people died in some of the worst religious violence seen in India since independence. Nobody has proved that Mr Modi did anything wrong, yet suspicions have lingered that he ignored or even condoned the pogrom, as a somehow understandable reaction to the death of 59 Hindu pilgrims in a train fire blamed on Muslims.

Today Mr Modi is the dominant figure in India’s opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He is more than likely to be its candidate for prime minister in general elections due next year (see article).

Outsiders are warming to him. Britain’s high commissioner to India led the charge, ending a boycott last year, just as Mr Modi’s campaign for re-election in Gujarat was under way. European Union ambassadors then broke bread with him. Rumours in Delhi suggest that America is pondering whether to issue him a visa. Is it right that the stains of 2002 should so easily be washed away?

Mr Modi is defined by more than violence against Muslims. Since 2002 Gujarat has been stable and has prospered. In his time as chief minister there, income per person in the state has more than doubled. If all Indians enjoyed the same income as Gujaratis, the country’s economy would be 50% bigger—easily outstripping France’s. Businesses flock to Gujarat, as do migrant workers; farmers have flourished. That helps to explain why Mr Modi was comfortably elected for the third successive time in December.

He has emerged as a moderniser and a proselytiser for small, effective government. Gujarat is a pro-business state that makes land available for investors, provides reliable power, decent roads and relatively uncorrupt officials. It is not perfect: the lot of women and children is harsh. But other Indians would gladly swap their problems with Gujarat’s.

Mr Modi also has good ideas. He believes in vouchers to improve education and in privatising state-run firms. He wants India to become a hub for defence manufacturing, but also a big consumer of solar power. He favours looser labour laws and conditions for generating productive, private jobs, rather than government make-work schemes. He thinks India’s priority is rapid growth to cut poverty. Indian business craves such a figure. Many jobless voters yearn for him, too.

However, making the trains run on time does not expunge his sins. Mr Modi has revelled in his reputation as a strident Hindu nationalist. Before 2002 he had organised marches by Hindu pilgrims on sensitive Muslim sites in other parts of India, whipping up communal anger. During the killings, which lasted for three days, his officials and the police stood idly by. Despite ample opportunities, Mr Modi has never voiced regret for what happened. Perhaps this is because, horrible though it is to accept, his reputation as a scourge of uppity Muslims explains the devotion to him of the BJP’s Hindu-nationalist hard core—the group the party relies on to get out the vote.

Mr Modi denies any wrongdoing. His defenders point out that the riots have been scrutinised in inquiries and that no court has convicted him of any crime. They are right. Doubt may cling to the impartiality of justice within Modi-dominated Gujarat, but India’s Supreme Court, though slow, is genuinely independent. Just last year one of Mr Modi’s former ministers was convicted of directing gangs in 2002 and sentenced to 28 years’ prison. Even if the national courts were crooked, Mr Modi would not have benefited: since 2004 the Congress party, the BJP’s bitter rival, has been in power nationally.

Look back in sorrow

Although Mr Modi may be clean enough to avoid conviction, he is not yet an attractive national candidate. India has a sorry history of burying sectarian violence. Little was done after the late Rajiv Gandhi looked away as Sikhs were murdered in Delhi in 1984 in revenge for the assassination of his mother. The same seems to be happening today, after a massacre last year of Muslims in Assam. Mr Modi could help end this blight. If he dreams of becoming a leader for all India, including its 177m Muslims, he must show genuine contrition for the horrors that happened when he was in charge in Gujarat.