The saffron flag that now flutters atop the Ram Mandir represents far more than the completion of a temple. It marks the closing chapter of a 500-year wound and the opening of a civilisational awakening that has redefined India’s relationship with its own past.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi pressed the ceremonial button to hoist the Dhwaja during the abhijit muhurat, he signalled to the world that India has finally reclaimed its interrupted civilisational narrative.

The journey from Babur’s conquest in 1528 to this moment has been neither simple nor inevitable. It required generations of Hindus to hold fast to a memory that political expediency repeatedly urged them to forget. Mir Baqi, Babur’s commander, demolished the temple at Ram’s birthplace and erected a mosque in its place.

What followed was not submission but resistance spanning centuries. From Swami Maheshanand’s battles against Humayun to Sri Guru Gobind Singh’s confrontations with Aurangzeb, the struggle became etched into the collective consciousness of Hindu society. From Nihangs defiantly inscribing a portrait of Shri Ram inside the Babri Masjid to karsevaks being slaughtered for being part of the reclamation movement – Bharatiya society has seen it all.

The modern phase of this movement began not in the political realm, but in the hearts of ordinary devotees. The appearance of Ram Lalla’s idols in 1949 reignited flames that had never truly been extinguished. Yet it took the organisational heft of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), and later the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to channel diffused longing into focused political........

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