Modi’s promised temple set to open — and please Hindu voters — ahead of India’s election
Frenzied preparations are underway in the northern Indian holy city of Ayodhya to mark the opening of a grand temple to Lord Ram, Hinduism’s most revered deity.
The Ram Mandir’s scheduled opening Monday will fulfill a longtime Hindu nationalist pledge and is expected to resonate with Hindu voters during a national election likely to be held in April or May. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, of the ruling Hindu nationalist party, is widely expected to win another term.
Several sprawling tent cities are being erected nearby to accommodate tens of thousands of devotees expected to attend the consecration ceremony. Dozens of private jets will fly India’s powerful elite, including top industrialists, movie stars and celebrities, to Ayodhya. Modi’s government has planned live screenings across the country, as well as at some embassies around the world.
Modi himself will be there, alongside several Hindu priests, for the placing of a statue of Ram in the temple’s inner sanctum.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has long campaigned for the temple to replace the 16th century Babri Mosque that was demolished by Hindu mobs in 1992, sparking nationwide riots that killed more than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims. The decades-long dispute over the site ended in 2019 when, in a controversial decision, the Supreme Court granted it to Hindus and gave a different plot of land to Muslims for a mosque.
The temple’s opening at one of India’s most contentious religious sites ahead of the spring election is expected to give momentum to Modi as he looks to extend his rule for a record third consecutive term by tapping into the religious sentiments of Hindus, who make up about 80% of the population.
An Indian court has acquitted 32 people accused of crimes in the 1992 demolition of a mosque that sparked riots in which 2,000 people were killed.
The temple, a three-story structure clad in pink sandstone, stretches across more than seven acres of a 70-acre complex. It will have a 4.25-foot idol of Lord Ram, who Hindus believe was born on the site where the razed mosque once stood.
The city, once dotted with tightly packed houses and rundown stalls, is already undergoing an elaborate makeover.
Nearly 7,500 people are expected at the opening ceremony, and by the end of the year 100,000 devotees a day are predicted to visit Ayodhya, according to official estimates.
The narrow roads have given way to a four-lane pilgrimage route, including the newly developed eight-mile Ram Path leading to the temple. The city boasts a new airport and a sprawling railway station with a daily passenger capacity of more than 50,000 people. Major hotel chains are building new properties, and locals are converting their homes into Airbnb-type lodgings. Flower sellers and street food vendors, anticipating a surge in demand, have transformed their shops.
At an open-air workshop in this northern Indian town, craftsmen have painstakingly chiseled columns and beams out of giant slabs of stone, engraved each with a number and stacked them three stories high.
Ananya Sharma, a local tour operator, said Ayodhya’s transformation gained momentum after the temple’s 2020 groundbreaking ceremony, also attended by Modi.
“Subsequent development initiatives have elevated Ayodhya to a destination of both spiritual and economic significance,” Sharma said.
The temple is being built at an estimated cost of $217 million, but it is far from complete. The site is filled with bulldozers and builders still working on the elaborate 46 doors — 42 of which will have a layer of gold cumulatively weighing about 220 pounds — and numerous wall carvings that will form the temple’s final flourishes.
At least two head priests from a Hindu sect have refused to go to the opening ceremony, saying that consecrating an unfinished temple goes against Hindu scriptures. Some top leaders from the main opposition Congress party have also turned down invitations to attend, with many opposition lawmakers calling the temple a political project.
Across India, however, the mood among Hindus has reached a fever pitch.
Politicians are visiting local temples and mopping the floors, obeying a directive that came directly from Modi.
TV channels are running wall-to-wall coverage ahead of the event. And volunteers from Modi’s party and other Hindu nationalist groups are going door to door distributing religious flags and pamphlets.
Since its independence in 1947, India has transformed from a poverty-stricken nation into one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.
On a recent afternoon, Om Prakash Bhatia went to house after house in a New Delhi neighborhood inviting people to take part in Hindu ceremonies at temples. Joined by other volunteers, he handed out saffron flags — a color associated with Hinduism — to residents, who presented him with marigold garlands and smeared vermilion on his forehead.
“Lord Ram is the center of our faith. After slavery and struggle of 500 years, finally the name of Lord Ram is victorious,” Bhatia said, alluding to the Muslim Mughals who ruled India before the British colonized it.
He chanted, “Jai Sri Ram,” or “Hail Lord Ram,” a slogan that has become a battle cry for Hindu nationalists, who allege that the Mughals destroyed Hindu culture. It has prompted Hindu nationalists to seek ownership of hundreds of historic mosques, sparking fears over the status of religious places for India’s Muslims, who have come under attack in recent years by Hindu nationalist groups intent on turning officially secular India into an avowedly Hindu nation.
Many others shared Bhatia’s feelings about the temple’s opening.
“I am very happy,” resident Gaurav Shourey said. “While our ancestors saw the temples being destroyed, our generation takes pride in seeing the construction of them.”
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