Ram temple construction is confirmation of India’s shift towards non-secularism

The Supreme Court, in a historic judgement on November 9 last year, allowed the formation of a trust to build the Ram temple in Ayodhya. The verdict was a victory for those who had struggled for over three decades for the construction of such a temple. As preparation, the Babri Masjid was demolished long ago, in 1992, by a mob of Hindutva zealots.

Incredibly, the Supreme Court called the demolition of the Babri Masjid illegal, and yet allowed the construction of a Ram temple at the same spot. In the minds of zealots, this was post-facto justification for the demolition of the mosque.

The construction of a temple, by itself, does not pose any danger to the secular fabric of India. What does pose such a danger is the fact that the temple is being built after destroying another place of worship, based on an unverified claim of a semi-mythical person being born at the spot aeons ago. For a rationalist observer, it cannot get more ridiculous.

Sadly, no political party seems to be interested in pointing out the absurdity of this exercise, or the lack of morality. This is probably because politicians, the wily class, recognise that the ground has shifted beneath their feet, and are playing to the gallery, so to speak. But one more fact deserves mention here — that the BJP has managed to mainstream an agenda that was considered fringe even by most ordinary Hindus thirty years ago. The lighting of lamps and bursting of crackers in many Hindu homes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of the temple on August 5 is testimony to this transformation.

The prime minister attended the ground-breaking ceremony of the Ram temple, laid the foundation stone and gave a speech, in which he made a cringe-worthy comparison — he equated the movement for the construction of the Ram temple to the freedom. Yes, no one will call this sentiment anti-national. But the larger problem was the sight of the prime minister of a secular country donning saffron robes, attending a religious event, in a thinly-veiled show of partisanship. The idea that the temple is for everybody is simply another way of saying that Hindu majoritarianism now officially passes for secularism.

How did this state of affairs come to be? Some politicians have stoked anti-Muslim sentiment for well over three decades now. Since the BJP came to power in 2014, there has also been a concerted attempt to cast anyone who does not approve of any item on their agenda as anti-national, or anti-Hindu. BJP leaders who protested such depiction during the General Elections last year, such as LK Advani, were the original stalwarts and progenitors of the religious-cultural movement that found its expression in the cry for the construction of a temple and the creation of a Hindu Rashtra.

Given this situation, the part of the apex court verdict that allows the Muslim side to build a replacement mosque in Ayodhya is of little comfort. The BJP has, at least for now, succeeded in recasting Indian secularism as Hindu majoritarianism, with very little public protest. This task has been made even easier by the absence of a strong, ideological, non-corrupt Opposition with a credible leader.

With the verdict and the laying of the foundation stone for the shrine, the Narendra Modi government may already have booked itself a third term, nearly four years before the next elections are due.