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On Monday, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a grand Hindu temple on the site of the razed mosque, he spoke not of contrition but of justice won and pride restored — of a glorious new epoch awaiting the believers of Lord Ram like him.
Thirty-two years after the Babri mosque was torn down in a seismic event in Indian history, the consecration of a $300 million Hindu temple on the contested hill that many Hindus believe to be the birthplace of Lord Ram marked not just a personal political victory for Modi, but also a triumph of his Hindu nationalist ideology over the secular, multicultural vision espoused by India’s founders.
“We must not bow down anymore. We must not sit down anymore,” Modi said in a speech after he emerged from the shrine’s ornate inner sanctum, where he prayed beside priests to establish a soul within the temple body. “The spirit of Lord Ram is present on the very first page of our Constitution. It is unfortunate that we had to fight to prove the existence of our Lord.”
With a soaring dome 160 feet high and grounds encompassing 71 acres, the lavish temple project marks a profound moment in India. It was anticipated by weeks of wall-to-wall coverage on pro-government television channels and in ebullient speeches by BJP politicians, who have called it a symbol of a new India proudly steeped in Hinduism, the faith of 80 percent of the population.
Busy intersections in New Delhi have been blanketed by the saffron flag of Lord Ram. Schoolchildren have participated in organized prayers to the god. Shops selling meat, frowned upon in modern Hinduism, have been closed in some states. Government offices and hospitals were ordered shut for a half-day on Monday morning to watch as Modi pronounced on television that India “had broken free from the mental shackles of slavery.”
Raghavan Jagannathan, a right-wing commentator, said the outpouring showed the significance of the temple inauguration in the Hindu psyche after centuries of Muslim and British rule and decades of “self-loathing” under independent India’s early leaders, who stressed secularism.
“Hindus got the short end of the stick with secularism, where minorities could celebrate their religious identity but majority Hindus had to suppress theirs,” said Jagannathan, author of “Dharmic Nation,” a book stressing India’s essentially religious national character. “That’s why you’re seeing a widespread celebration right now. This temple is a coming-out party for Hindus who say: I can finally be a Hindu without fear.”
But critics feared the state-encouraged religious festivities — and simmering talk of Hindu supremacy and historical retribution — showed how India under Modi has diverged from the vision of those who struggled for freedom like Mohandas K. Gandhi, a defender of minority rights who often pleaded for the safety of his Muslim compatriots when Hindu-Muslim riots erupted.
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a Modi biographer, said Monday’s event marked “an era when the prime minister is the high priest of Hinduism, blurring all lines between religion and politics on the one hand and between religion and the Indian state on the other.”
“We are on our way to becoming a de facto theocratic state with Hinduism becoming the official religion,” Mukhopadhyay added. “It will be very difficult for the country and its religious minorities to return to what was experienced before 2014.”
Since Modi’s election that year, emboldened Hindu nationalist groups have pushed for legislation discouraging interfaith marriage and Muslim cultural practices. Reports of hate crimes against Muslims have increased. Modi, meanwhile, has become the most powerful and popular leader in decades partly by leaning into his Hindu bona fides.
This month, he prepared for the temple inauguration by praying at more than a dozen holy sites, draping himself in robes of pure white and, according to his press office, sleeping on the floor and drinking only coconut water in accordance with rules governing Hindu rituals.
The temple consecration is widely expected to give Modi a boost ahead of national elections expected in April, in which he is heavily favored to win a third term. Several opposition parties boycotted Monday’s event, and some high-ranking Hindu theologians, known as the Shankaracharyas, rebuked the prime minister for consecrating an unfinished temple in violation of Hindu scripture and scheduling a religious event in the lead-up to elections.
Modi said he was backed by an even higher authority.
“God has made me the representative of the people of India during the ceremony,” he told the country in a video this month that garnered 4.2 million views on social media. “I seek blessings from all of you.”
In some ways, the story of the controversial Ram Temple traces the rise of the Hindu nationalist movement, its most prominent political wing, the BJP, and their effort to make India into a religious state.
As a fringe political party in the 1980s, the BJP gained national traction by making the restoration of the temple a mainstream issue that galvanized the Hindu vote. Many Hindu nationalists claimed that a Hindu temple had existed at the site before it was torn down by Muslim invaders in the 16th century to make way for a mosque built in the name of Babur, the founder of the Mughal empire.
After BJP leaders raised awareness for the project during a 1990 cross-country rally partly organized by Modi — a young party worker at the time — a mob razed the Babri mosque on Dec. 6, 1992, drawing international condemnation and apologies from BJP leaders, who expressed remorse.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a BJP leader who later became prime minister, said he felt “regrets, agony, anguish” and considered resigning from the party’s leadership. Lal Krishna Advani, the hard-line BJP president who led the cross-country rallies demanding a Ram temple, called the mosque’s demolition the “saddest day of my life” in a later memoir.
But that sense of contrition faded as the BJP’s Hindu-first politics came to dominate India. In 2019, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that a Hindu temple could be built on the hilltop. Modi, reelected resoundingly that year after a heavily Hindu nationalist campaign, laid the foundation stone at the construction site in 2020 as work began.
Today, BJP leaders envision Ayodhya growing into a major religious tourism hub, and officials say $3.5 billion has already been poured into development projects that include new roads, a railway station and an international airport serving the town of just 55,000 residents.
The success of the Ram Temple project has given fresh impetus to Hindu nationalists, who say other mosques across the country should be demolished and replaced by temples to settle historical scores. Already, Hindu activists have called for studies to examine whether two major mosques in the northern cities of Varanasi and Mathura were built on top of earlier temples destroyed by Muslim invaders — a finding that would potentially support the argument for their demolition.
Last week, the BJP lawmaker Anantkumar Hegde, called for mosques in southern India to also be destroyed in the name of “revenge, revenge, revenge.”
“If we do not take revenge for the 1,000 years, then the Hindu community can clearly say that our blood is not Hindu blood,” Hegde said.
In a narrow alley in Ayodhya, a pilgrim named Himanshu Kumar Mehta, who had bicycled 400 miles in seven days to visit the temple the moment it opened, weighed the vast significance of the monument Modi had delivered nearby.
The Ram Temple was only the beginning, said the 27-year-old tire salesman. He wanted to see more temples, more religious schools, more Indians live devout Hindu lives.
“The Hindu Rashtra is inevitable now,” Mehta said, referring to the formation of a Hindu state. “This temple is done. The Mathura temple is next. We are fighting on all fronts. And we are winning.”
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