Godhra is a town and originally the name came from gou which means "cow" and dhara which has two meanings: one in Sanskrit which means "hold" or "land" and the other in Hindi which means "flow". So, identically it means The Land of the Cow, a municipality in Panchmahal district in Indian state of Gujarat. It is the administrative headquarters of the Panchmahal district.
Godhra is also one of the religious places in the India which has four bethaks (temples) for Vaishnav Sampraday. There are two main seats of are of Lord Gokulnathji, and one each for Lord Gusaiji and Lord Mahaprabhuji. Godhra is the only city in India that has all three seats (orbhaitaks) of the Mahaprabhuji, Gusianji,and Gokulnathji. Godhra also has three beautiful Jain temples. The main idol (or Mul Nayak) in the Jain Temple is that of Tirthankar Bhagawan Shantinath.
Godhra is widely infamous in India and internationally for being the starting point of the 2002 Gujarat violence. Statewide communal riots between Hindus and Muslims began after the Godhra train burning incident near the Godhra railway station on 27 February 2002, when local Muslim mobs attacked a train burning alive Hindu pilgrims in a planned conspiracy, as ruled in a subsequent verdict of the Gujarat High Court.