A temple, a sacred city and a Prime Minister who uses religion as an instrument: these are the ingredients of an operation with both ideological and electoral purposes that took place this Monday in the state of Uttar Pradesh, in northern India.
This Monday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated
a new shrine
in
Ayodhya, one of the holy cities of Hinduism.
It is
a grandiose temple
, made of marble and pink sandstone, which is set on
392 sculpted pillars
, and has been consecrated to the god Rama, a deity especially venerated in northern India.
The temple illuminated at night.
Photo: Reuters
The construction of this temple on the site of
an old mosque demolished in 1992
by a horde of fanatic civilians is the culmination of a campaign promised by the Hindu movement and its leaders, who have been in power in New Delhi for almost ten years.
In the mind of Prime Minister Modi, who personally attended the temple's consecration ceremony, the construction of this building
, designed to embody Hindu supremacy,
represents a turning point in modern Indian history.
In a way, it represents
the country's entry into a "new era" of Hindu hegemony
, far removed from the
secular and plural tradition
that its founding fathers instilled at the time of independence in 1947. After 70 years of secularism, India, under the under the aegis of his new leaders,
he is reborn as a "Hindu."
A mosque with three domes
Located in northern India, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, the city of Ayodhya has long been a sleepy, provincial city.
However, it is a name that every Indian knows, having grown up listening to the legend of this ancient city.
According to the Ramayana - the Indian Iliad - it was
the birthplace of the god Rama more than 7,000 years ago
and, later, the capital of his kingdom.
It is also an important city
for Indian Islam
.
Ayodhya is home to
a large Muslim population
that has long thrived around its imposing three-domed mosque,
built in 1527
by order of ruler Babur, founder of the Mughal dynasty.
The mosque, which was in use until the early 1990s, has been at the center of controversy since the 19th century, with Hindu fanatics laying claim to the site, which according to popular legend was the birthplace of Rama.
Hindu fanatics claim that the mosque was built on the site of a temple dedicated to Rama, although these claims have never been confirmed by scientific research.
Not even the archaeological excavations carried out by the very serious "Archaeological Survey of India" have been able to determine whether the ruins found under the foundations of the building
were mosques or temples.
However, with the rise of Hindu fundamentalism in India beginning in the 1980s, the controversy surrounding the Ayodhya mosque reemerged to the forefront of the public scene.
History accelerated on December 6, 1992, when
a crowd of Hindu believers
, mobilized by extremist political movements,
broke into the medieval mosque and demolished it with pickaxes and hammers
, tearing down its domes and walls, brick by brick.
As a result of this violence, inter-denominational riots
broke out throughout the country ,
as is common in India, leaving more than 2,000 dead, most of them Muslims.
On the political front, this environment of crime and chaos
primarily benefited Hindu fundamentalists
.
The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has ruled the country virtually uninterrupted
since 1947
although it is now losing ground, came to power, first in 1996 for five years, before returning in 2014 at the hands of its leader Narendra Modi.
A populist and ideologist of the "Hindutva" movement (Hindu hegemony), Modi came to power
by promising the faithful that he would build the Rama temple on the same site as the
Ayodhya mosque.
However, since the demolition of the mosque in 1992, the matter has been the subject of endless legal battles, before the Indian Supreme Court took up the case.
During Narendra Modi's second term, the verdict was finally delivered.
Although the judges of the highest court considered that the demolition of the mosque was a "calculated act", carried out "in flagrant violation" of the law, they nevertheless ordered
the granting of a new land 25 kilometers from Ayodhya
for the construction of a new mosque and authorized the construction of the temple on the site of the old mosque.
Devotees gather at the temple to the god Rama.
Photo: Reuters
Conditions were now ripe for the fulfillment of the promise made by Narendra Modi and his BJP cronies to the Hindu fanatics in return for their support for the project.
The dream has come true.
Modi promised and delivered
Narendra Modi came to Ayodhya to inaugurate his temple and remembered that he had kept his promise.
However, things did not happen as he expected.
First, the main opposition leaders
declined the invitation
to attend the inauguration of the temple, which they considered a political instrumentalization of religion.
Worse still, the
Hindu high priests
who were supposed to officiate at the consecration ceremony also came up empty-handed, arguing that Hindu sacred texts prohibited them from installing idols of deities until the construction was completely completed.
And the construction work on the Rama temple in Ayodhya, which began in 2020
, will end in 2027.
"The temple is not ready, but Narendra Modi is," ironically stated political scientist Balveer Arora.
"The Prime Minister's concern about not waiting for the works to be completed is explained by the politicization of the issue. The date of consecration of the temple has been set with an eye on the electoral calendar," adds Balveer Arora.
"The government plans
to dissolve Parliament in February and call elections
next, which must be held before June."
Modi, a talented politician, is betting on the visibility that the inauguration ceremony in Ayodhya gives him to
obtain a third electoral victory,
allowing him to compete with Nehru and Indira Gandhi, his eminent predecessors as Prime Minister of India.
Given the favorable opinion indices in the polls, Modi could achieve the triplet that he proposes, despite the extreme polarization of Indian society around dividing lines around issues of identity that the ten years he has been in power have encouraged.
A bad omen?
Under these conditions, as Audrey Truschke, professor of South Asian History at Rutgers University (United States), writes, "the inauguration of the Ayodhya temple is likely to be
a very bad omen
, not only for Indian Muslims, but also for Hindus who still believe in their country's founding values of pluralism and secularism."
While Hindus have to adapt to a shrinking Indian society, in which politics is now determined by religion and vice versa, Muslims have to resign themselves to their
increasing marginalization and a tense cohabitation with the Hindu majority,
with its freedom increasingly restricted cult.
Several of the country's major mosques
are already the subject of various lawsuits
in court and risk suffering the same fate as the Ayodhya mosque.
The construction of the Ayodhya temple, authorized by an Indian Supreme Court that is increasingly finding it difficult to uphold the rule of law, heralds the advent of a lesser India, with its
democratic ambitions revised and corrected
, according to many observers and analysts.