India: Ram Temple inauguration stokes political controversy
January 22, 2024
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Ram Temple in the Indian city of Ayodhya on Monday.
Devotees believe the grand temple is built on the birthplace of Lord Ram, a sacred Hindu deity worshiped by millions of devotees.
The inauguration ceremony comes months before a national election in India , and many opposition politicians say the event will be a thinly veiled campaign rally for Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is favored to win a third successive victory at the polls.
Parties in the opposition bloc, known as Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), are boycotting the Ram Temple inauguration ceremony.
Uttar Pradesh's Ayodhya has seen a massive transformation ahead of the event, including expanded roads, a new airport and railway station, and a multi-level car park.
The India Meteorological Department has even launched a dedicated website to provide weather-related information specific to Ayodhya.
The temple trust organizers have invited around 8,000 guests, including a long list of influential industrialists, cricket legends and Bollywood icons.
Opening old wounds
The Ram Temple was built on grounds where the Babri Masjid, or Mosque of Babur, stood for centuries before it was torn down in 1992 by Hindu extremists in an effort to shift India's secular foundations toward a more visibly Hindu identity.
The demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque sparked deadly religious riots around India, killing about 2,000 people, most of them Muslims.
In 2019, India's Supreme Court awarded the site to the Hindus, eventually paving the way for the construction of the Ram Temple on the site of the destroyed mosque.
Muslim residents of Ayodhya say the temple's opening will evoke the blood-soaked memories of the violence there decades ago.
But the new temple and its opening fulfills a key campaign promise of Modi and his Hindu nationalist party.
According to Gilles Verniers, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), that fact may further boost the prospects for Modi's BJP in this year's general elections.
The consecration of the Ram temple marks both the culmination of a decade-long campaign to "reclaim a disputed religious site as Hindu ground, and the moment where the project of building a Hindu nation becomes officially and fully endorsed by the state," Verniers told DW.
Verniers pointed out that the inauguration of the Ram temple is less a turning point than an accelerant for Hindu nationalists' majoritarian project.
"On that date, whatever walls or constitutional principle that kept religion aside of politics will be shattered, giving a new impulse to similar campaigns that target Muslim religious and cultural sites in India," Verniers added.
Moment of triumph for Hindu nationalists
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has deemed Monday's Ram Temple inauguration a "national festival" and has declared a public holiday for all educational institutions.
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a political analyst who has chronicled the movement for a Ram temple since the early 1980s, said that the temple event is being pursued to secure and strengthen hold over political power.
He even drew parallels to the 1947 partition that split British India into two nations: Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.
"It became a mass movement from 1989 onwards," Mukhopadhyay told DW.
"It is a political project that reconfigured India, and our way of looking at society and politics has undergone a fundamental change. It is more than a turning point. It is a point where Hindu politics entered mainstream Indian politics."
Author of "The Demolition and the Verdict: Ayodhya and the Project to Reconfigure India," Mukhopadhyay pointed out that the story will not end with the Ram temple.
"The event on January 22 will not signal the closure of issues used to target people along lines of identity and beliefs. Instead, it will herald the beginning of a new era of repeat shows in other cities, towns, and villages. Mathura and Varanasi are waiting to follow the same trajectory," he added.
There is currently a debate over the centuries-old Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, one of Hinduism's holiest cities, and the Shahi Idgah mosque in Mathura, stoking fresh tensions between India's two largest religious communities.
Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, a former lawmaker and national vice-president of the BJP, pointed out that the Ram temple is a turning point in India's cultural history.
"This temple is a symbol of our ability to protect our self-respect," Sahasrabuddhe told DW.
"What is being constructed in Ayodhya is not just a temple of brick and mortar but a monument saluting the civilizational journey of India," he added.
This article was originally published on January 19 before the ceremony took place.
Edited by: Keith Walker