India's Hindu nationalists scored a resounding victory Dec. 22 in a closely watched state election that was seen as a crucial test amid talk of early national elections.

The bitter campaign in Gujarat state — fought in the shadow of anti-Muslim riots that left more than 1,000 people dead in 2002 — had many predicting a close race between the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress party, which heads the federal government.

Some in Congress had been hoping to unseat the BJP and its divisive Gujarat leader, Narendra Modi, whom many in India accuse of standing by while Hindu mobs attacked Muslim communities following a train fire that killed 59 Hindu pilgrims in 2002.

Instead, the BJP won 117 seats in the 182-seat state assembly during the voting, which was held in two phases earlier in December. Congress won 62 seats and independents took three seats, it said.

For the BJP, which governed India from 1998 until 2004, it was a crucial fight in one of its last strongholds.

A loss, or even a poor showing, would have further weakened the party that is contending with a national leadership in disarray and the fact that Hindu nationalism is no longer the ideological draw it was in the 1990s for voters — who these days are more concerned with seeing the benefits of an economic boom that has left much of the country behind.

Congress, conceding defeat, called the vote "a great victory" for Modi — even though the party picked up 10 BJP seats and one independent seat in the election.

Still, Congress played down the vote's national importance. "The victory is certainly limited to Gujarat and a certain kind of divisive politics has worked there," Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi said.