As the coronavirus pandemic rages, workers in the north Indian town of Ayodhya toil to build a new Hindu temple where a mosque called the Babri Masjid once stood. An unassuming structure of brick and plaster, the mosque was built in the sixteenth century on the orders of Babur, the Muslim conqueror from Central Asia who established the Mughal dynasty in India. For centuries, the mosque adjoined temples and monasteries associated with the legendary Hindu divine king Rama. But in 1992, Hindu nationalist politicians organized a mob to storm the mosque and hack it to rubble, claiming that it had been built on the site of Rama’s birthplace. This episode of iconoclasm signaled the rise of Hindu nationalism as a powerful force in modern Indian politics, culminating in the election in 2014—and reelection in 2019—of one of its most fervent proponents, Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Supreme Court of India ruled last year that the demolition of Babri Masjid was illegal, but it still awarded the site to a government-appointed trust that would build a temple there. The decision amounted to a victory for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and the larger Hindu nationalist project that seeks to define India as a Hindu nation with a principally Hindu past. Muslims, who make up around 14 percent of the population, have lived in South Asia for more than a millennium, but the BJP and its allies seek to deny their belonging to the nation’s present or past.
