India - Modi Consecrates Ayodhya's Ram Mandir

24/01/24, 23:41 India: Modi Consecrates Ayodhya's Ram Mandir
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The Temple Modi Built

How a small town in an electorally significant state captured India's
imagination.
JANUARY 24, 2024, 2:59 PM
By Junaid Kathju
Crowds gather for the consecration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, India, on Jan. 22. RITESH SHUKLA/GETTY IMAGES
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On Dec. 6, 1992, in the town of Ayodhya in India’s northern state of

Uttar Pradesh, a mob razed a historic mosque called Babri Masjid. Days afterward,
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee submitted his resignation
from the party’s national executive committee to express his disapproval of the
crowd’s demolition.
Vajpayee, who went on to become the prime minister of India, called out his party in a
video interview in the days after the incident. He regretted the loss, Vajpayee said, and
underscored that the incident should never have happened—the “worst
miscalculation my party has made.” Today, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks his
third consecutive term, the BJP is once again exploiting religious division to kick-start
its campaign for 2024 general elections.
On Monday, Modi consecrated a giant new temple, Ram Mandir, devoted to the Hindu
deity Rama in Ayodhya, which is believed by Hindus to be Rama’s birthplace. The BJP
left no stone unturned to use the event to its advantage. In the lead-up, Ayodhya’s
orange buildings were draped with festive Hindu artwork—saffron flags, swastikas,
bows and arrows—as chants of “Jai Shree Rama” (“Glory to Lord Rama”) rang through
the streets.
“It was our long-cherished dream to see Rama ji coming home, and Modi has finally
made it possible,” said Nani Ben, a 45-year-old woman who traveled nearly 900 miles
with several other women from the city of Ahmedabad in the northwestern state of
Gujarat. Many of India’s 1 billion Hindus are of the belief that without Modi, the
formation of the temple would have remained a distant dream.
Religious fever was running high as devotees traveled from all over the country for the
temple opening, yet the visibility of politics—and specifically, the BJP—also couldn’t
be missed in Ayodhya.
Posters featuring Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath constantly
reminded visitors that they were here because of them.
The BJP, which is the political arm of the Hindu nationalist organization Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), had spearheaded the campaign for the construction of a
temple dedicated to Rama in Ayodhya for decades prior to the destruction of Babri
Masjid. After that incident, building the temple became a priority for the BJP, a right-
wing party with a devoted Hindu base.
Govind Mittal distributes pamphlets featuring Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to devotees in Ayodhya on Jan. 12.
LUQMAN ZEERAK FOR FOREIGN POLICY
A week before the consecration, Govind Mittal, a 59-year-old YouTube personality

who performs Hindu devotional songs, was distributing pamphlets in the town
market. The pamphlets featured pictures of Modi and Rama.
Of the temple, Mittal said that “it would not have been possible if Modi ji didn’t make
it happen. … All these years, no government dared to build a temple here. Today, it is a
reality.”
Mittal, who traveled from Mathura, another town in Uttar Pradesh, was in the city
with a group of six friends to witness Modi leading the consecration ceremony.
A woman is framed by cutouts of Modi and the Hindu deity Lord Rama as she opens a temple door in Ayodhya on Dec.
26, 2023. BIPLOV BHUYAN/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES
“It is a historic moment, and I want to be here to witness it,” he said. “They”—the
Muslims—“took it from us; we have only reclaimed it today.”
The dispute in Ayodhya is a long-standing and complex issue between India’s majority
Hindus and minority Muslims. It revolves around the piece of land where the Babri
Masjid, a mosque built in the 16th century, was situated.
The first recorded instance of violent conflict over the site came in 1853, when a group
of Hindus contended that the mosque was built on the birthplace of Rama. Muslims,
on the other hand, argued that they had been praying at the Babri Masjid for
generations—until 1949, when an idol of Rama was stealthily placed inside the
mosque.
The dispute took another ugly turn during the aforementioned day in December 1992
when a violent mob of around 150,000 people, mobilized by the right-wing Vishva
Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party, tore down the mosque.
An inquiry into the incident that was completed in 2009 found 68 people responsible,
including BJP leaders Lal Krishna Advani, Uma Bharti, and Murli Manohar Joshi, all
of whom reportedly gave speeches at the rally at the mosque on the day of its
destruction.
In November 2019, with the BJP in its second consecutive term in power, the Supreme
Court of India delivered a historic verdict on the Ayodhya dispute, stating that the
disputed land should be handed over to a trust to build a Hindu temple. Muslims were
provided an alternative piece of land to construct a mosque.
Later, on Sept.30, 2020, the court acquitted all those accused in the 2009 report into
Babri Masjid’s demolition on account of “inconclusive evidence.”
As the consecration day neared, hundreds of people who had been part of the mob
that tore down the 16th-century mosque three decades prior arrived in the city to
celebrate the big day.
Govind Kamabhai shows his 1992 karsevak card in Ayodhya on Jan. 12. LUQMAAN ZEERAK FOR FOREIGN POLICY
Govind Kamabhai, a resident of Gujarat, was 30 years old when he last came to
Ayodhya as one of the karsevaks, or religious volunteers, to demolish the mosque.
Feeling elated about seeing the temple consecrated where he stormed a mosque 31
years ago, Kamabhai described it as a happy ending.
“All credit goes to Modi ji, who fulfilled our long pending desire,” he said while
flaunting his karsevak identity card, given to religious volunteers, which was issued in
1992.
Radha Devi sells rosaries for a living outside Ram Mandir temple in Ayodhya on Jan. 12. LUQMAN ZEERAK FOR FOREIGN
POLICY
At the entry gate of the temple, a 65-year-old woman named Radha Devi was selling
rosaries for a living. She made her way to the city in 1992 from the state of Jharkhand,
along with her husband, to take part in the demolition of the mosque. She recently
returned to Ayodhya.
“It was my husband’s religious duty to demolish the mosque,” she said. “May Rama
bless Modi ji for bringing back our lord to us.”
Workers cross the construction site of the Ram Mandir temple in Ayodhya on Dec. 29, 2023. ARUN SANKAR/AFP VIA GETTY
IMAGES
Ram Mandir is not expected to be completed until 2027, and the

timing of the consecration has raised many eyebrows. India’s opposition parties
perceive it as the BJP’s tactical move to make political gains ahead of the general
elections slated for April or May.
Apoorvanand, a professor in the Hindi department at Delhi University and a

contributor to publications including the Wire and Frontline, told Foreign Policy that
after Babri Masjid was razed in broad daylight, Ram Mandir will stand as a
“monument of the greatest injustice.”
Of this week’s consecration, he said that “the objective to conduct this program in
January was decided way back so that BJP can build on it for 2024 elections.”
About 300,000 people flooded into Ayodhya for the ceremony, and there were more
than 4,000 special invitees from across India and abroad.
But the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, declined the invitation
to the inauguration, calling it a “political project,” while a BJP spokesperson said that
Congress’s unwillingness to attend the event was equivalent to “opposing God.”
Apoorvanand believes that boycotting the consecration ceremony was a good decision
by Congress.
“I think Congress is assumed to be a pro-Muslim and anti-Hindu party. So, this

perception is not going to change whatever decision they would have made. Even if
they had decided to attend the ceremony, BJP would have declared its victory,” he
said.
India’s four prominent Shankaracharyas—the heads of the country’s main

monasteries—have also decided not to attend the consecration ceremony, citing the
rules of the Sanatan Dharma (eternal religion) in Hinduism, which forbid visiting any
temple under construction.
The VHP and RSS telecast the temple’s consecration event on giant screens across
India, while across the country, Indians illuminated their homes with lamps to mark
the occasion, on the prime minister’s urging.
The damaged Malik Shah Masjid under repair in Ayodhya on Jan. 12. LUQMAAN ZEERAK FOR FOREIGN POLICY
Meanwhile, as the country is gearing up to welcome Lord Rama

home, local inhabitants in Ayodhya have been left without a shelter over their head.
In a bid to build wider roads approaching to the temple, the Uttar Pradesh government
has demolished houses, temples, mosques, tombs, and several thousand shops,
threatening the livelihoods and housing of affected locals.
Nand Kumar Gupta, the president of a local traders’ union called Ayodhya Udyog
Vyapar Mandal, said that out of 4,000 shops in the town, around 1,600 were
demolished in the process. Moreover, according to the union, 800 houses, 30 temples,
nine mosques, and six tombs have also been bulldozed for the city’s beautification.
“Nobody is bothered about us, as if we don’t exist,” Gupta said. “Our homes and
livelihood have been snatched, but nobody is paying heed to our pleas.” He added that
very little or no compensation was given by the authorities to the affected people.
The situation of the handful of Muslims in Ayodhya is much worse. Apart from losing
their shops and homes, Muslims who spoke with Foreign Policy complained of living
in “constant fear” due to alleged “provocative sloganeering” by the Hindus outside
their homes.
Over a mile away from the new temple is a standalone mosque that lost a part of the
front of its façade during the road widening process—a lone testament to Islam’s
presence in the town.
Hesmatullah Nisra, a 95-year-old who helped build that mosque in her youth and lives
in a two-room house adjacent to it, said, “I have given my life to this mosque. All my
earnings got exhausted in making it. And with the grace of Allah, I will defend it till
my last breath.”
Hesmatullah Nisra and Mohammad Shahzad Khan pose inside the mosque premises in Ayodhya on Jan. 13. LUQMAAN
ZEEARK FOR FOREIGN POLICY
The mosque is currently looked after by her 50-year-old son, Mohammad Shahzad
Khan. A butcher by profession, Khan had to shut down his mutton shop following the
local government’s new guidelines that prohibit selling meat and alcohol within the
temple’s vicinity.
Khan said that after demolishing the portion of the mosque, the authorities are now
forcing local Muslims to paint the outer walls of it with Hindu artwork to match the
city’s theme.
“We are consistently resisting it. We cannot paint the mosque’s walls with Hindu
deities,” he said.
After the road widening, the area has been left with only 10 to 12 Muslim households,
while the rest of the families living in shanties were told to vacate.
“They”—the authorities—“also want us to leave this place,” Khan said. “Our

neighbors, whom we know for ages, have turned against us. But we are not going
anywhere. It would be on our dead bodies to leave this mosque.”
A cyclist rides past a Hindu temple illuminated with lights on the banks of the Sarayu River in Ayodhya on Dec. 27,
2023. ARUN SANKAR/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Nine miles away from the now-demolished Bari Masjid are five acres
of deserted land awaiting funds to see the construction of a mosque. This was the land
allotted to Muslims by the Supreme Court as an alternative to the Babri Masjid.
Located in the village of Dhannipur, the land has been turned into a playground by the
local youth and children. A shrine to the Sufi saint Hazrat Abdul Rehman Saani
Seherwadi sits on the edge of the land.
Though the Waqf Board, a statutory body administered by the Ministry of Minority
Affairs that controls Muslim religious properties, has prepared the blueprint to build
the mosque—along with a cancer hospital, law college, and a community kitchen—
there isn’t money to make the plan a reality. And an Uttar Pradesh Waqf Board
member, Athar Hussain, said that there were no firm plans to begin work on the
project.
“We are facing a financial crunch. We are in talks with several organizations for funds,
but as of now, we don’t have any specific timeline to start the construction,” Hussain
said. Unlike the way the Ram Mandir temple was planned, he said, “the land allotment
to us came abruptly, and we were not prepared for it.”
Residents of Dhannipur feel blessed to be getting a significant mosque built in their

village, but the pain of losing Babri Masjid is deep in their hearts.
“The construction of this mosque is indeed the greatest joy in our life, but we can
never forget the cost Muslims had to pay for it,” said a local named Mehtab Khan.
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Junaid Kathju is a Kashmir-based freelance journalist. Twitter: @JunaidKathjoo Instagram: @Junaidkathju

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24/01/24, 23:41 India: Modi Consecrates Ayodhya's Ram Mandir

The Temple Modi Built

JANUARY 24, 2024, 2:59 PM

On Dec. 6, 1992, in the town of Ayodhya in India’s northern state of

A week before the consecration, Govind Mittal, a 59-year-old YouTube personality

Ram Mandir is not expected to be completed until 2027, and the

Apoorvanand, a professor in the Hindi department at Delhi University and a

“I think Congress is assumed to be a pro-Muslim and anti-Hindu party. So, this

India’s four prominent Shankaracharyas—the heads of the country’s main

Meanwhile, as the country is gearing up to welcome Lord Rama

threatening the livelihoods and housing of affected locals.

“They”—the authorities—“also want us to leave this place,” Khan said. “Our

Residents of Dhannipur feel blessed to be getting a significant mosque built in their

Junaid Kathju is a Kashmir-based freelance journalist. Twitter: @JunaidKathjoo Instagram: @Junaidkathju

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