INDIAN PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi today opened a contentious new Hindu temple on the site of a demolished Muslim mosque, labelling it a “new era” for India.
At a ceremony, that Modi said embodies the triumph of his muscular Hindu nationalist politics, it galvanised loyalists ahead of elections this year.
“Breaking the shackles of slavery, the country should rise, taking lessons from the past,” Modi said, speaking outside the temple to the Hindu deity Ram.
The temple was built on grounds where a mosque – Babri Masjid – stood for centuries, before it was torn down in 1992 by Hindu zealots incited by members of his party.
The demolition triggered the worst religious riots since independence – killing 2,000 people, most of them Muslims – and shook the foundations of India’s officially secular political order.
According to a timeline published by Al Jazeera, Hindus believe the Babri Masjid was built on the site of a temple on land that was the birthplace of Ram. An Indian Supreme Court ruling in 2019 gave ownership of the land to a Hindu trust.
“22 January 2024 is not merely a date in the calendar but heralds the advent of a new era,” Modi said.
Modi added: “It’s Ram’s supreme blessings that we are witnessing.”
Outside, tens of thousands of people packed the streets of the northern town of Ayodhya, chanting, dancing, waving flags, honking horns and beating drums, as military helicopters showered flower petals from the sky.
Few members of Ayodhya’s Muslim community were seen joining the jubilant street party and opposition leaders have stayed away.
But for Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the opening of the Ram Mandir temple is a landmark moment in a decades-long campaign to align the country’s governance with its majority faith.
“The Lord has made me an instrument to represent all the people of India,” Modi had said ahead of the “auspicious” opening.
Modi and the BJP have sought to bring the Hindu faith to the forefront of public life since sweeping to power a decade ago.
Party luminaries regularly condemn earlier eras of Islamic rule over parts of India as a time of “slavery” when their own religion was oppressed with Ayodhya a key plank in their narrative.
Devout Hindus believe Ram, one of the most revered Hindu gods, was born in the town more than 7,000 years ago, but that the Babri mosque was built over his birthplace by a 16th-century Muslim emperor.
The BJP played an instrumental role in public campaigning that eventually led to the mosque’s demolition.
The destruction presaged the rise of the BJP and Modi as unstoppable electoral juggernauts, displacing the secularist Congress party that had governed India almost without interruption since independence from Britain.
Modi’s consecration of the temple alongside Hindu priests will again project him as a defender of the faith ahead of a general election expected to begin in April.
The BJP is heavily favoured to win a third successive landslide victory, in part because of Modi’s appeals to Hindu nationalism, and opposition parties are boycotting the temple ceremony, saying the event will be a thinly veiled campaign rally.
But many of India’s 200 million Muslims, already anxious in a climate of increased sectarian tensions, have watched the clamour around the temple with trepidation.
Mohammed Shahid, 52, speaking to AFP last month in Ayodhya, recounted how his father was burned alive by a mob.
“For me, the temple symbolises nothing but death and destruction”, he said.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say