The inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, the small north Indian city that Hindus believe as a matter of faith to be the birthplace of Lord Ram, a Hindu deity, is both a milestone in republican India’s history and a sideshow.
It is a milestone because the prime minister of a nominally secular republic, Narendra Modi, was the master of ceremonies at this event. In just over 30 years, India’s political class has travelled from condemning the demolition of the mosque, on the site of which the half-built temple now stands, as an act of sectarian vandalism, to celebrating it as the first act in the re-founding of a hitherto rootless republic. The idol of the infant Ram installed in a temple raised on the site of a razed mosque is to be the icon of this new Hindu nation.
It is a sideshow, because the movement to build a Hindu temple at Ayodhya was never an end in itself; it was a means to an end, the public assertion of Hindu supremacy over India’s religious minorities, particularly its Muslims. The Bharatiya Janata party’s campaign for the Ram temple was a lever used to prise apart the institutional safeguards that protected India’s nominally secular democracy.
In this, the BJP has succeeded. Its vanguard role in the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque made it, by the end of the 20th century, the pan-Indian party of Hindu grievance. The killing of Ram temple activists in a railway train in 2002 (31 Muslim men were convicted of setting fire to the train) and the pogrom of Muslims that followed, gave Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, the chance to stand out as the hammer of the Hindus. In his political persona, the sacred symbolism of the temple and the profane satisfaction of violently showing minorities their place were joined.
It is this coming together that was celebrated in the spectacle today at Ayodhya. The names of the main guests at the idol-installation ritual, published in full-page newspaper advertisements, were a clue to the political theatre the public could expect. It was a shortlist of the principal figures of the Hindu nationalist right: prime minister Modi, Mohan Bhagwat, the chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Yogi Adityanath, the militant Hindu monk who is the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and in the running to be Modi’s successor, and Anandiben Patel, the BJP governor of UP.
These were the only four public figures present in the sanctum when the ritual of consecration was performed. Modi was front and centre; ostensibly he was only one of the yajamanas, the ritual patrons on whose behalf the ritual was being performed, but for the camera he was the One. Interestingly, the only person who got to share the frame with Modi through most of the ritual was Bhagwat. This was appropriate, because for his organisation, the RSS, this moment of Hindu triumphalism has been nearly a century in the making. Founded in 1925 to forge a Hindu nation, the RSS is both Modi’s and the BJP’s parent organisation. Bhagwat was there in his role as the political Hindu’s paterfamilias.
The idol that was consecrated was just 51 inches tall, deliberately smaller than an adult male because the Ram of this temple is a child. The symbolism of Modi’s part in the ritual was obvious: he was the Hindu regent who ruled on behalf of this beatific infant. And since the child will never grow up, Modi’s regency will endure.
Outside the sanctum, the campus of the half-built temple was crowded with an invited audience made up of religious ascetics, members of hardline Hindu organisations such as the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, early adopters of the temple cause and celebrities from the worlds of business and cinema. The billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani and his family were there, as were film stars such as Amitabh Bachchan, Rajinikanth, Chiranjeevi, Madhuri Dixit, Hema Malini, Alia Bhatt, Ranbir Kapoor, Ayushmann Khurrana and Vicky Kaushal. One breathless television anchor gushed about Ayodhya becoming “celeb central”. Whether they knew it or not, these celebrities were there in a dual capacity, or, to put it in terms they would understand, in a double role: as devotees of Ram and as extras for Modi.
The rows of chairs stuffed with celebrities, the music on the public address system, the helicopters sprinkling petals overhead – the occasion recalled, in an odd, incomplete way, India’s Republic Day parade, minus, of course, the parade. The half-built temple served to remind viewers that Bhagwat and Modi’s Hindu Rashtra (Hindu nation) is a work in progress, that more of the same will follow. But in the end, this tableau that celebrated the resurgence of a new Ram-centred nation was important not for the citizens present, but for those who were absent by design – every Indian who wasn’t a political Hindu.
In this season of Donald Trump, it’s worth remembering that the ethno-nationalism that the temple at Ayodhya embodies isn’t the handiwork of an erratic, populist tycoon; it is a century-old political project backed by militant cadres that number in the millions. The India (or Bharat) that Modi and Bhagwat envision is more like Netanyahu’s Israel, only on a subcontinental scale; as majoritarian and as intolerant.
Mukul Kesavan is an essayist and author based in Delhi
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
