Politics and religion form an explosive cocktail. Narendra Modi He is aware of it, but he knows the recipe well. The Indian Prime Minister inaugurated the Ram Mandir Hindu temple in the city of Ayodhya on Monday. In doing so, he fulfilled a historic wish of Hindu nationalism and another demand of his political family, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, its acronym). And he was responsible for demonstrating this with a grand ceremony full of symbolism.
“Our ram has arrived after centuries of waiting,” the Prime Minister announced before the more than 7,000 people present in the event. Hindu priests chanted Sanskrit verses and made offerings at the feet of the black stone statue depicting the Hindu deity Rama as a child. Meanwhile, millions of people were watching an act that colonized all television channels.
Devotees traveled from different parts of the country to this holy city in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh to attend the inauguration of the temple, which cost money to build around 200 million euros. It wasn't just the gray party officials who appeared; The country's big personalities and several Bollywood stars were also present. Of course it was necessary to be invited.
Many landed at the new Ayodhya airport; Others came on foot as a pilgrimage to this city on the banks of the holy Sarayu River, which Modi wants to make more than just a tourist center: the Hindu equivalent of the Vatican or Mecca. To date, his government has invested around $9.6 billion in infrastructure. The Prime Minister wants to realize in Ayodhya his vision of India, a prosperous state – economy and modernization follow a dizzying growth trend – which at the same time promotes Hindu identity.
A look back at history
The ceremony involved a new setback for the Muslim community of the country, which accounts for 14% of the population, estimated at 1,430 million people. This has a historical explanation. The temple was built on the ashes of the Babri Masjid Mosque, which was built in the 16th century by the troops of Emperor Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty that ruled India for centuries. Hindus, on the other hand, believe that there was a temple before the Babri Mosque. For them, it is also the birthplace of Rama, a god they worship as the embodiment of moral righteousness and courage.
Under British rule, after the Mughal era, the denominations reached a compromise to ease tensions over Ayodhya. Muslims could pray in the mosque; the Hindus, on a platform set up outside. But in 1949, just two years after independence, an icon of the god Rama appeared in the mosque. Many Hindus believed that it was so a divine intervention. In reality, his people had placed it intentionally. Local authorities feared a violent reaction and concluded that closing the mosque was the best solution.
This completely unusual situation would only change at the end of the 1980s. The Hindu fundamentalist party Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) launched an intensive political campaign to “free” the deity Rama from his “prison” of “Muslim”. At that moment, the leaders of the conservative BJP, a then marginal formation in which Modi served as regional secretary, took the stage. The inflammatory speeches escalated to such an extent that they ultimately caused unrest Hindu nationalist mob destroys mosque in 1992.
The incident sparked a series of clashes between Hindus and Muslims, resulting in people being killed More than 2,000 people across the country. And Modi's people took maximum political advantage. From two seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, in 1984, the BJP's tally rose to a total of 161 seats in 1996. The growth was exponential.
Legal advice
A 1991 law stated that all places of worship in India must retain the character they had at the time of independence. But the clause precisely excluded the Ayodhya Mosque, whose status had been disputed in court for several decades until then. However, instead of allowing the reconstruction of the Babri Mosque, the Supreme Court ruled in 2019, while Modi was in government, a permit to build a Hindu temple. The judge thereby overturned a 2010 ruling that divided land between Hindus and Muslims, who were offered land near the Babri mosque to build a new mosque.
Emboldened by this ruling, Hindu nationalists now hope to gain control of at least two more major mosques, those in Benares and Mathura, built by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. In this way they try to eliminate the expressions of what they are looking at “Centuries of colonial humiliation”. Firstly, by the Mughals; later at the hands of the British. It is the same agenda that Modi promotes. The Prime Minister talks about throwing off the yoke of “1,200 years of slavery”.
election campaign
Observers of Indian politics interpreted the inauguration ceremony as the starting signal for his election campaign. A battle cry to his bases. Modi, who has ruled uninterruptedly since 2014, will seek his third consecutive victory in next May's elections. The forecasts are favorable. Polls suggest his party will again secure a majority in the Lok Sabha. Since then I would be the first to get it Jawaharlal Nehru, the first person to serve as Prime Minister. However, his journey has little or nothing to do with that of the historic nationalist leader.
Other BJP leaders, like the Prime Minister Atal Bihari VajpayeeThey reduced the party's Hindu ideological burden to appeal to the majority of Indians. On the other hand, Modi, who was involved in the bloody anti-Muslim riots in 2002 in the state of Gujarat, where he then ruled, reversed this dynamic by promoting a citizenship law that discriminated against Muslims and encouraging several states to adopt anti-Muslim measures. Conversion laws. They were not his only measures.
“Why did Nehruvian secularism fail so miserably?” asks the columnist. Sadanand Dhume on the pages of The Wall Street Journal. “In some cases, India's westernized elites have misjudged the depth of Hindu religiosity.” His critics do not give up and denounce Modi's disregard for the secular constitution and his campaign norms. Meanwhile, the divided and weakened opposition is warning against the prime minister's plans to turn India into an authoritarian Hindu state.
80% of Indians are Hindus, but not everyone celebrates the victory in the construction of the Ram Mandir Temple. Many still cite the 1994 ruling of the nine judges of the Supreme Court, the most cited court ruling in the country's history, which served to confirm this on the basis of Article 356 of Magna Carta “Politics and religion must not mix”. Modi changes the plan.