Workers put up cutouts of Hindu deity Lord Ram and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Ayodhya, India, on Jan. 18. Preparations are underway in India’s northern Ayodhya city to mark the opening of a grand temple for Lord Ram, Hinduism’s most revered deity.Deepak Sharma/The Associated Press
Sanjay Ruparelia is the Jarislowsky Democracy Chair at Toronto Metropolitan University, and a visiting fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in South Africa.
On Jan. 22, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will consecrate a Ram temple in the city of Ayodhya in northern India. The decision to perform a religious ceremony, even though the temple’s construction remains unfinished, is clearly motivated by electoral incentives. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will likely soon call a general election. The party has traditionally sought to mobilize Hindu voters through public spectacles and social campaigns imbued with religious symbolism. Lord Ram, a deity extolled for his chivalry and virtue, is revered by hundreds of millions. The recently launched television serial, Srimad Ramayan, which portrays his epic journeys, is extremely popular.
Yet these events have wider political significance. Over the past decade, the BJP has sought to undermine the secular foundations of modern Indian democracy by forging a majoritarian Hindu nation. The Ram temple is a vital part of its long-standing agenda to weaken constitutional provisions that protect religious minorities’ rights, as well as refashion the public sphere and alter everyday social relations.
Three things have inspired Hindu nationalists since 1947. Chief among them was the Ram temple movement, which led its foot soldiers to demolish the Babri mosque that stood on the site of Lord Ram’s alleged birthplace. Its destruction, on Dec. 6, 1992, unleashed the worst communal riots in India since partition.
Second, Hindu nationalists sought to introduce a uniform civil code. In the 1950s, the Congress party reformed Hindu family laws regarding marriage, divorce and related matters, but largely allowed Muslim communities to decide how to reform their own laws. Hindu nationalists sought to codify a common set of such laws. But prominent Muslim leaders argued it would undermine their cultural autonomy and religious freedom.
Finally, they wished to abrogate Article 370 of the constitution, which gave the disputed Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir special asymmetric rights to protect its political autonomy and demographic balance within India’s federal parliamentary democracy.
Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, championed secularism to contain the threat of Hindu supremacy. In contrast to the French model of secularism, which banished religion from the public domain, and the American, which introduced a wall of separation, Nehruvian secularism advocated “principled distance” among religions. The state would recognize its citizens’ multiple identities, protect cultural differences, and advance the interests of minorities and the socially oppressed within particular religious communities.
This syncretic understanding of secularism contained internal tensions. Yet it was a sincere attempt to manage the unprecedented religious diversity and social pluralism of the world’s largest democracy.
Hindu nationalists condemned the Indian state as “pseudo-secular” for granting these special prerogatives. The inconsistent stands of the Congress, especially during the tenures of Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv, led the BJP to accuse its main rival of “minority appeasement.”
A quarter-century of hung parliaments in New Delhi, starting in 1989, compelled the BJP to shelve these controversial aims. Its coalition governments (1998-2004) required the support of secular opposition parties. The BJP promised during the 2014 general election, when it became the first single-party majority government since 1984, to reduce corruption, modernize the economy and transform India into a great power. The new government declared the constitution would be its only scripture. Some observers believed the BJP had moderated its stance.
Yet the BJP and its affiliated organizations pursued a militant agenda during its first term in office. Ministers revised school textbooks to glorify ancient Hindu myths, denigrate Mughal rulers and commemorate key ideologues. Campaigns to break relationships between Hindu girls and Muslim boys and to reconvert Dalits and Adivasis to Hinduism, termed ghar wapsi (“back to home”), began to spread. Hindu nationalists increasingly demanded that citizens demonstrate their loyalty, yet demands to proclaim Bharat Mata ki Jai, “Victory to Mother India,” clashed with the faith of many Christians and Muslims. Moreover, BJP state governments introduced laws to punish the slaughter, consumption and trade of cows, rousing vigilantes to impose the law and police everyday morality. Dalits and Muslims bore the brunt of these attacks. Scholars, writers and journalists who expressed criticism suffered harassment and intimidation. Others experienced violence or faced charges of sedition for purportedly “anti-national” deeds.
The re-election of the BJP in 2019, with a greater parliamentary majority, spurred a more hard-line agenda. The Prime Minister unveiled a new slogan: sabka saath, sabka vikas, sabka vishwas (”with everyone, for the development of all, with everyone’s trust”). Yet minorities suffered renewed attacks by vigilante groups.
The government annulled Article 370, separated the region of Ladakh from the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and transformed the two new regions into union territories under direct rule by New Delhi. The BJP’s long-standing mantra – one constitution, one sovereign leader, one flag – exemplified its unitary vision of the nation.
In 2019, in a long-awaited ruling, the Supreme Court unanimously awarded the Hindu plaintiffs the right to build a Ram temple on the site where the Babri mosque once stood, igniting controversy. The court observed that the destruction of the mosque by Hindu vigilantes was “an egregious violation of the rule of law.” However, it claimed that Muslims could not substantiate exclusive possession of the site – a burden of proof it did not impose upon the claimants. The decision to resolve the decades-old title case, but not determine the guilt of senior BJP leaders in the related demolition case, provoked intense concern.
Finally, the Modi government introduced the Citizenship Amendment Act, which granted illegal migrants fleeing religious persecution in neighbouring countries a path to citizenship. Officially, it was a humanitarian gesture. But the act excluded Muslims, undermining the secular principle of jus soli that grounded Indian citizenship. Revealingly, the government claimed its passage atoned for the wrong of Partition, offering Hindus a “right of return” to their purported homeland.
All these developments seek to cement Hindu majoritarianism in the world’s largest democracy. Will it succeed?
Several opposition parties have declined to attend the consecration. The Congress party described it as a partisan event. Its presumptive leader, Rahul Gandhi, declared that religious belief was a personal matter. Similarly, the four shankaracharyas of the country, which head its principal Hindu monasteries, have criticized the Prime Minister for arrogating their traditional role as religious leaders. They will skip the inauguration too.
Yet the BJP has reshaped public consciousness in India, especially in the north where the party dominates, posing a dilemma for its opponents. The Congress accepted the controversial judgment that authorized construction to start. The party dithered for weeks before deciding not to attend. Its leaders frequently visit temples and don sacred threads to earn the trust of Hindus. Still, the BJP has accused them of being “anti-Ram.”
Moreover, the Prime Minister is a consummate political actor. He excels at performing divisive symbolic acts. Many Bollywood celebrities will attend the consecration. Roads have been beautified and renamed for various deities. The government has organized 44 special trains to bring more than 100,000 volunteers who have taken part in the movement, from all 28 states and eight union territories of the country, for a month after the ceremony. Long-standing demands to construct temples on contested sites in Kashi and Mathura are growing.
The attempt to reconceptualize the Hindu majority as India’s natural citizens is part of a wider contemporary trend. Ethnonationalism threatens the pluralistic foundations of civic life in many countries. In a year when democracy is on the ballot in several key nations, however, the upcoming general election in India could prove momentous for the world.
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Nikkei Editorial
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
visit website
