Monday’s inauguration of the new Ram Mandir in Ayodhya by India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, was a moment decades in the making. Yet it also came too early. Despite the grand spectacle of the ceremony, with celebrities, tycoons and politicians in attendance, the temple is still incomplete. There is an obvious explanation for this rushed endeavour, and it is not religious. India will go to the polls in late spring and while Mr Modi is all but guaranteed to win a third term, he wants a large majority for his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP).
Mr Modi rode to power, and has entrenched it, on the back of rightwing Hindu nationalism. On Monday he went beyond the exploitation of ethno-religious sentiment. He did not merely attend the ceremony; he carried out rituals. Religion and authoritarianism have proceeded hand-in-hand in recent years. But few strongmen have melded the political and religious to quite this degree. As his biographer, Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, observed, the event cast him as “the high priest of Hinduism”, disquieting some religious leaders.
The constitution still calls India a secular republic. But the facts on the ground suggest otherwise. Mr Modi’s supporters treat the idea of secularism as a foreign imposition on a grand civilisation, and as camouflage for the mistreatment and suppression of Hindus. In reality it is their aggressive chauvinism that has cost Indian society dearly, and it is Muslims who are treated as second-class citizens. Human Rights Watch warned last year of the government’s “systematic discrimination and stigmatisation of religious and other minorities, particularly Muslims” and of increasing violence by BJP supporters against targeted groups.
The new temple is not just a symbol of these political struggles, but part of them. It stands on the site of the 16th-century Babri Masjid mosque, built by the Mughal emperor Babur, and razed in 1992 by a Hindu nationalist mob who believed a temple previously stood there; Ayodhya is said to be the birthplace of the deity Lord Ram. The BJP had inflamed sentiment and BJP politicians stood and watched as thousands tore down the mosque. Its destruction sparked communal violence in which more than 2,000 people died. Then, in 2019, the supreme court ruled that the demolition of the mosque had been illegal – but that nonetheless the site belonged to Hindus, allowing the new building’s construction.
Ayodhya’s story was central to the BJP’s rise. But while Congress and other opposition parties boycotted the ceremony, they have failed to mount an effective challenge to Mr Modi’s dangerous majoritarianism and have at times succumbed to its dominance. The message is not simply of Hindu triumph, but of grievance and revenge. “We must not bow down any more. We must not sit down any more,” Mr Modi said on Monday.
Despite the lengthy history of the Ayodhya dispute, he described the consecration as “the beginning of a new era”. It is not merely that thousands more mosques are being targeted nor that Muslims in Ayodhaya and beyond feel more vulnerable than ever. Many believe that the prime minister will rewrite the constitution if he gains a sufficient majority, though he has dismissed such speculation. Monday may mark another fateful step towards that moment. It may also indicate that he does not need to change the words on paper when he has reshaped his country so effectively already.
