Name: How India’s Modi Is Using This Controversial Hindu Temple to Win Re-Election
Uploaded: 2024-05-03T04:00:00Z
Duration: 7 min 50 s
Description: A new $220 million temple sits at the center of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan to construct a nearly $4 billion “Hindu Vatican.” But the plan has been dividing the secular country while providing Modi with political gain ahead of the next election. Photo: Rajesh Kumar Singh/Associated Press

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A new $220 million temple sits at the center of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan to construct a nearly $4 billion “Hindu Vatican.” But the plan has been dividing the secular country while providing Modi with political gain ahead of the next election. Photo: Rajesh Kumar Singh/Associated Press

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How India’s Modi Is Using This Controversial Hindu Temple to Win Re-Election

Reporter: India is at a political crossroads, and this growing city of 2.5 million is central to it. The government is pouring billions into a multi-phase project that will make Ayodhya a major hub for religious tourism. There's a new international airport, an upgraded rail system to carry 500% more passengers, and new roads, but this unfinished Hindu Temple is at the center of it all.

Ayodhya is being developed by Mr. Modi and the government of India as a Hindu Vatican.

Reporter: But the project dredged up violent memories overshadowing the city, memories that Modi is using in his quest to transform India into a Hindu nation with this Temple at its heart. The government currently has just under 200 projects in the works, valued at $3.7 billion. These projects range from grand entrances into the town to parking lots, and they're all meant to highlight the town's spiritual significance. Modi even inaugurated the train station and airport, which is filled with Hindu iconography. The Temple at the project's center, the Ram Mandir, already saw nearly 3 million visitors in the weeks following its opening, which is just one early sign that turning Ayodhya into a hub of religious tourism is expected to boost the local and national economies. In 2019, about 20 million people visited the city, but in 2023, the number of visitors jumped to over 57 million. The influx of tourism is expected to generate up to $3 billion in tax revenue per year, starting in 2025. To capitalize on it, the private sector is quickly grabbing land with multinational chains like Radisson, Marriott, and Wyndham already planning new Hotels. But economic growth is only a fraction of the story.

The demand for the Ram Temple in Ayodhya has been there for the last 40, 45 years, and a huge political struggle was waged for it.

Reporter: The Temple is being built to honor the Hindu deity Ram, who, it is believed, was born in Ayodhya thousands of years ago. But before the Ram Mandir, there was a Mosque that stood in the same place, the Babri Masjid. It was built in the 1500s when the Mughal Empire, a Muslim dynasty, ruled over what is now India and Pakistan. But, Hindus claim it was built directly over the ruins of an ancient Hindu Temple marking Ram's birthplace. In 1947, when India gained independence from Britain, it became a secular republic, but centuries of religious turmoil lingered. And one day in 1992, it all came to a head. At least 75,000 Hindu nationalists descended on Ayodhya. With hammers, rods, and shovels, they tore the Mosque down stone by stone.

Within minutes, everything had been raised to rubble and dust. By late afternoon, there was not a trace of the Mosque left at all.

Reporter: The destruction sparked interreligious riots across several Indian cities and also reached Pakistan. By the end, 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were dead. The Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, wanted to build a Temple where the Mosque stood. But, a decades-old court case about who would control the land prevented construction.

You have to understand that this was a dispute, which was as old as India becoming independent.

Reporter: It wasn't until 2019, five years into Modi's term as Prime Minister, that the court made a final decision clearing the last legal hurdle. The land went to a trust that received over $220 million in donations to build the Temple, and not just financial donations. In anticipation, people started bringing bricks in the '90s, which were then used to lay the foundation of the Temple.

After August 2020, construction began, and it was very clear at that point that, come what may, Mr. Modi is going to inaugurate the Temple before the next Parliament reelections, and that is what has happened exactly.

Reporter: The Ram Mandir isn't finished yet, but last January, Modi consecrated it and opened it to the public just months before India's next election. Around 8,000 people attended the Consecration, including the high-profile Indian actor Amitabh Bachchan and billionaire Mukesh Ambani.

There have been occasions in the past where previous Prime Ministers have participated in religious functions, but at no point that they have been the ones who have performed the ritual. But Mr. Modi was the one who was actually leading the entire process. He was effectively the high priest of Hinduism on that particular day.

Reporter: In the past, India's Prime Ministers rarely made a public display of their faith. But, throughout his tenure with the BJP, Modi has been outspoken about reshaping the country into a Hindu nation, straying away from its secular heritage, often at the cost of its Muslim population. Of India's 1.4 billion people, an estimated 80% are Hindu and 14% are Muslim.

But there was a certain sentiment which was also articulated by the organizations and parties, which preceded the BJP that said it is not correct to make India a secular country, but Muslims have got a Muslim nation, Pakistan, so the Hindus should get a proper Hindu country. But as the BJP started rising, that started becoming more and more a mainstream thinking.

Reporter: A Pew research survey from 2020 found that nearly 2/3 of Hindus say it's very important to be Hindu to be truly Indian. And according to the US State Department report on International Religious Freedom in India, 108 former government officials wrote to Modi, saying, "The hate and malevolence directed against Muslims seems to have embedded itself deep in the recesses of the structures, institutions, and processes of governance in the states in which the BJP is in power."

The future of Indian politics will depend on the results of the 2024 Parliamentary Elections.

Reporter: As of 2023, the party was the largest in India's Parliament. But, if it wins even more...

Then it would mean an emphatic endorsement of the BJP's Hindu majoritarian politics.

Reporter: Finishing Ram Mandir is only the beginning. India's Ayodhya Vision 2047 Plan includes museums and a theme park based on the "Ramayana," an epic poem about the life of Lord Ram.

The city is going to expand like nobody ever imagined. Mr. Modi is driven by the idea of creating permanence for himself in Indian History.

Reporter: And building this Temple is one way to cement his legacy.