The opening of Ram’s Hindu temple in Ayodhya, India, was going to be difficult.
It is the site of years of conflict between Hindus and Muslims. Hindus believe it is the birthplace of Lord Ram, a prominent deity. For Muslims in India, it is the site of a 16th century mosque that was demolished by a mob in 1992, sparking sectarian riots that led to some 2,000 deaths.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi elevated the significance even further by attending the ceremony and laying the foundation for the temple on Wednesday. Many other members of his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were also present. It caps a long running saga that has been at the heart of religious tensions in the world’s largest democracy.
“This temple will symbolize the determination and collective resolution of millions of Indians,” Modi said at the ceremony. “For those who have devoted their lives to this cause, this day is as significant as the day India gained independence.”
The Ayodhya dispute played a significant role in helping the BJP rise to power. The promise to build a temple on the site has been the party’s rallying cry since the 1980s. With the groundbreaking ceremony, Modi delivers on a core campaign promise to his Hindu nationalist base. The event also coincides with the first anniversary of the BJP-controlled parliament revoking special self-governance for Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir — another key election promise.
“The message is a clear one: here is a day which should be celebrated as the day BJP fulfilled two of its core promises,” says Sanjay Kumar, director of New Delhi based think-tank Center for the Study of Developing Societies. “The fact that no opposition leaders have raised their voice against this event being held in the middle of a pandemic shows how powerful the BJP has become.”
The ceremony comes as Modi struggles to deal with the fastest-growing COVID-19 outbreak in the world, an ailing economy and border tensions with China. India has some 1.9 million confirmed COVID-19 cases—third highest in the world, after the U.S. and Brazil. Local media reports that strict COVID-19 protocols have been put in place in Ayodhya for the event.
The crash on the site dates back to the 1500s when Mughal Muslim emperor Babur ordered the structure of a mosque in Ayodhya, which is believed to be through hindus the sacred position where Lord Ram was born. Many Hindus claim that the mosque, Babri Masjid, built on a temple committed to Ram. Violence between Hindus and Muslims recorded on the site as early as 1853.
In the 1980s, the issue was brought back to national attention by a Hindu nationalist group and supported by the then-incipient BJP. In 1990, BJP leaders campaigned for the reclamation of the land and the construction of a temple in the same spot where the mosque stood.
On December 6, 1992, a crowd of Hindu nationalists demolished the mosque, causing riots across the country. In 1993, retaliatory bombings in the country’s monetary capital, Mumbai (then Bombay), killed more than 200 people.
The structure of the temple follows the verdict of the Supreme Court of India in November 2019 that ended the legal war and allowed the structure of the temple.
The decades-long dispute on the site follows the emergence of Hindu nationalism advocated by the BJP, which came to force in the national point with the election of Modi as prime minister in 2014. The crusade to build the temple has often been incorporated into the party. electoral manifest since 1996.
Historians and academics cite the demolition of the 1992 mosque and the riots that followed as defining moments in India’s fashion history. They are also believed to have introduced the emergence of the existing devout identity policy that still dominates the country. Modi himself, then a minor member of the party, was one of the organizers of a political demonstration and devoted in 1990 to protect the structure of a temple on the site of the mosque.
“The systematic momentum for political force through the Hindu right would have progressed without the ready soil through the Ayodhya movement,” says Zoya Hasan, political scientist and professor emeritus at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “This has contributed to India’s basic transition from a pluralistic democracy to a majority government.”
Since Modi’s election in 2014, BJP extremists have been pushing for a program that identifies Hindu supremacy in a country that was conceived through its founders as a secular state. With Ayodhya’s dispute as a backdrop, Ram has been reshaped to become a reborn Hindu identity icon: his call is invoked as a war cry through crowds of Hindu lynx crowds.
To commemorate the ceremony, an Indo-American organization reportedly arranged photographs of Lord Ram and the temple on billboards in New York’s Times Square. However, there are reports that the advertising company will transmit the photographs at the request of Muslim groups.
Muslims account for about 14% of Indians, but out of a total population of 1.3 billion, this means that India has the third largest Muslim population in the world: about two hundred million Muslims. According to human rights groups, hate crimes against Indian Muslims have been at stake since Modi’s party came here to force in 2014.
Response from the country’s Muslim community have been largely muted. Ahead of the groundbreaking ceremony, a Muslim member of Parliament called on Modi to not attend the function saying that it would be against his constitutional oath as prime minister of a secular country.
Prominent Muslim journalist Rana Ayyub called the opening of the temple in a place where “a corrupt act” took a position as “the ugly dance of facism.”
Last year’s Supreme Court verdict granted separate land for the structure of a mosque. An acceptance as true has already been formed for the structure of a mosque on a site about 15 miles from the original mosque. Muslims across the country had combined reactions to the court’s verdict last year, and many expressed discontent with the verdict, while many others expected the network to close and agree in the future.