India celebrated 75th Republic Day on 26 January 2024 to commemorate the adoption of the Constitution of India, which came into effect on the same date seventy-five years ago. The national jubilations were preceded by the consecration of the Ram Mandir on 22 January 2024 in Ayodhya. The religious ceremony was dubbed as “a political gimmick” by Apoorvanand Jha, a well-known Delhi professor, columnist and political commentator. In his opinion, “it was more about prime minister Narendra Modi’s self-projection than Ram Mandir’s consecration.” Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, another Delhi based journalist, and author of upcoming book The Demolition, the Verdict and the Temple, opined that “we are seeing the emergence of political Hinduism, with Mr Modi being the chief priest.” He further said that “all lines between religion and politics got blurred.”
The land where the Ram Mandir has been constructed, after getting a clean chit from the Supreme Court of India on 9 November 2019, previously housed a sixteenth-century mosque called Babri Masjid. The mosque was demolished on 6 December 1992 by Hindu mobs on the instigation of right-wing Hindu ultranationalist organizations. The event triggered a wave of violence in several cities of India. As a result, the ensuing Bombay Riots resulted in the killing of more than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, and evoked fear, dread, and scepticism among religious minorities of India.
For right-wing Hindu ultranationalists, the newly-built Ram Mandir represents a watershed moment in the history of independent India and is being rejoiced as the triumph of Hindutva over the so-called secular, multicultural Hindustan envisioned by the country’s founders. For Muslims, it is an epitome of judicial injustice, religious victimization and communal violence.
An article in The Guardian by Hannah Ellis-Petersen published on 30 October 2022 notes that “thousands of mosques” are at the risk of being targeted in India. In this regard, a 16th century Shahi Masjid in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, was demolished in January 2023 following a similar incident with a 300-year-old mosque in Muzaffarnagar in November 2022.
While prime minister Narendra Modi was busy performing religious rituals along with a team of priests during the consecration of the Ram Mandir, according to various Indian newspapers, a frenzied Hindu mob of over 200-300 men carrying saffron flags went on a rampage in Sector-V of Shanti Nagar, a Hindu-majority neighbourhood in Mumbai, and ransacked all shops and other business establishments belonging to the Muslim community.
In separate incidents, reported by Al Jazeera on 26 January 2024, a Muslim graveyard was set ablaze in the northern Indian state of Bihar; a Muslim man was paraded naked in the Sangareddy district of the southern Indian state of Telangana; and a saffron flag was hoisted atop a mosque in Agra, Uttar Pradesh.
The Wire, an independent Indian online news portal, also reported on incidents involving Hindu men planting saffron flags on holy crosses at four churches in Madhya Pradesh’s Jhabua district on the eve of the inaugural ceremony in Ayodhya. All this seems to be the result of confidence Hindu radicals got by seeing their prime minister consecrating a Hindu Temple.
The violence and vandalism that religious minorities, especially Muslims, have faced since the grand opening of the Ram Mandir is at a tangent to the Article 25 of the Indian Constitution which proclaims, “all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice, and propagate religion.”
The preamble to the Constitution of India resolves to make India “a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic and to secure to all its citizens.” However, in a country where 80 percent of the population is Hindu, the Ram Mandir nevertheless marks a moment in Modi’s India, signalling the transition from a socialist secular republic to a hardcore Hindu Rashtra. The presence of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat alongside the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi at the ceremony lends further credence to the preceding notion.
A stark dichotomy has emerged, portraying two distinct facets of India: one characterized by the prosperity of the Hindu majority and another marred by the persecution of religious minorities, particularly Muslims, who experience a sense of marginalization and endure treatment akin to second-class citizenship.
According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), “religious freedom conditions in India are taking a drastic turn downward, with national and various state governments tolerating widespread harassment and violence against religious minorities.” Human Rights Watch also warned last year of “systematic discrimination and stigmatization of religious and other minorities, particularly Muslims,” under the incumbent Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.
The global perspective on the mainstreaming of Hindu fundamentalist organizations during the Modi era is marked by significant scepticism. Michael Kugelman, the director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute, underscores that “prime minister Narendra Modi has now positioned India to become a Hindu state in a formal sense, a move that would be welcomed by his large base but decried by many non-Hindus and critics as a betrayal of India’s secular traditions.” The same concerns were raised by the former US president Barack Obama that “India may pull apart if the rights of the religious and ethnic minorities are not upheld.” As a result of growing Hindu majoritarianism and the deteriorating state of democracy in the country, India was labelled as an “electoral autocracy” by the V-Dem Institute in the Democracy Report 2023. It signals towards a nation at a crossroads.
Lastly, the marginalization of Muslims has laid bare Modi’s rhetoric about the “freedom of faith” within India. As he will seek a third consecutive term in power during the general elections, which are expected to be held in India between April and May 2024, the political pundits argue, the politicization of the Ram Mandir is sure to yield significant results for the Modi-led BJP. They fear, if he wins another term, the limited space for religious freedom in India would definitely shrink further. Hence, the fate of religious freedom and democratic values in India hinges upon the next elections.
