The image of an ornate Hindu temple with a plethora of decked porticos and carved columns has been almost inescapable on my social media feeds in the last week. News images have shown elaborate processions taking over public streets all across India and large tableaus of this temple being featured in governmental parades.
This temple, consecrated on Jan. 22, 2024, is the Ayodhya Ram Mandir, a shrine to the Hindu deity Ram located on what some claim is the god’s birthplace. The site was occupied by the Babri Mosque until it was attacked and destroyed by right-wing Hindu mobs in 1992. Its destruction emboldened anti-Muslim rioters as waves of violence swept the subcontinent, killing thousands. Right-wing Hindu leaders justify the incident with claims that an ancient Ram temple was destroyed in order to build the mosque in the 16th century. The 1992 demolition was critical in solidifying the Hindu right’s presence in national politics, and the dream of constructing the Ram Mandir upon the mosque’s debris has been at the forefront of their campaign tactics since.
I am not a scholar of Indian politics or a forensic scientist; I’m not here to argue about the facts of this case. Rather, I want to reflect on their presentation and the ways in which the demolition of the Babri Mosque, the subsequent construction of the Ram Mandir, and the rhetoric used to justify these actions have spelled out a definitive end to secularism in India.
Perhaps most obviously problematic to me is the notion that India is the rightful, natural home of the fabricated Hindu race. This notion proposes that the demolition of the mosque and subsequent construction of the mandir is a step to return Ayodhya, and thus India at large, to its “rightful inhabitants,” to its chosen people, to some notion of a unified, indigenous religion. Government leaders and Instagram comments alike allude to the assumption that India is Hindu land, and that Hindus are the rightful inhabitants of the nation. But India is a secular nation according to its constitution, and it boasts a stunning plurality of ethnic groups, languages, and spiritual traditions that have thrived together for centuries. The argument that the construction of the Ram Mandir, on top of the demolished home of the Babri Mosque, is a means of returning India to its indigenous inhabitants is at odds with any tolerance of religious freedom and cultural minorities in the subcontinent. It sets a dangerous precedent that seems to justify the destruction of non-Hindu culture in the name of a reductionist history. When these arguments surface alongside reports of the erasure of Muslim history from Indian textbooks, the prominence of an imagined Hindu history of India is undeniable.
Related to the myth of India as land for and by Hindus is the reclamation argument; in this instance, the belief that building the Ram Mandir on top of the demolished Babri Mosque means “reclaiming” this sacred spot, fighting against colonialism and external powers that subjected India to their influence. Perhaps if Hindus were not a majority in India, perhaps if Hindus did not enjoy the support of a religious nationalist government, perhaps if Hindus were historically the marginalized group in India, this argument would carry weight. The Muslim Mughal rulers that are believed to have built the Babri Mosque are descendants of Middle-Eastern invaders that built a powerful empire controlling much of the subcontinent. However, since the Mughal era, Hindus have become the dominant and ruling religion in India, and have in recent years imposed religious ethnonationalism upon the nation. Because of the ruling status of Hindus today, the move to “reclaim” the site of the Ram Mandir feels less like true reclamation and more like conquest. The idea that this site must be reclaimed, when Muslim culture and life throughout the subcontinent is already under threat, sounds much more like a call for a purge than an anti-colonial project. The imposition of Hinduism itself can be seen as a colonial project, considering the vast plurality of spiritual and cultural beliefs indigenous to India. Using decolonization as an excuse to bulldoze a historic mosque—and a holy site for one of India’s most persecuted religious minorities—is unconvincing to me.
Most concerning are the ways in which the government itself has supported the construction and opening of this temple. On Jan. 22, every Indian received a half day off from work and school, a nationally recognized holiday to honor the Ram Mandir’s historic unveiling. In other words, in a secular nation, the construction of a monument dedicated to a single religion was made a national holiday, a celebration, a nationalistic cultural project. Regardless of how you may feel about the construction of the temple itself, I hope you can see how this act of nationalizing the consecration of the Mandir makes abundantly clear how the government does not even try to hide behind the guise of secularism. They no longer care to hide their religious nationalism, instead proclaiming it loud and proud. With offices and businesses closed, Indians of all faiths were forced to observe or take part in the festivities, whether they wanted to or not. Ram was inescapable, as my grandmother wrote to me from her sister’s home in Chennai. It was made abundantly clear to every Indian that this temple, Ram, Saffron, and Hinduism are cornerstones of national identity, and that diversity, Islam, and secularism are not.
As parades in support of Ram and its new home, enabled by the day off work, snaked through towns and cities, secular India was thrown onto the funeral pyre. The spectacular saga of the construction of Ayodhya’s Ram Mandir, and the circumstances leading to its unveiling last week, are a Hindu nationalist government’s way of telling Muslims and other minorities that their culture is not their nation’s culture, that they are aliens rather than locals, that their faiths are outsiders in this supposedly secular country. While Hindu culture is reclaimed, Muslim culture is destroyed. While Hindu holy sites are built, the rubble of Muslim holy sites is cleared. While parades honor the consecration of a Hindu temple, the same parades honor a controversial demolition project that led to over 2,000 deaths, primarily of Muslim citizens.
While Hindus shout “Jai Shree Ram” to welcome their lord and savior back to his supposed birthplace, many cover their ears, unable to bear the sounds that herald the end of a secular nation.
Akhil Joondeph can be reached at ajoondeph@wesleyan.edu.