When India became independent, Nehru’s speech, ‘Tryst with Destiny’, set the tone for the future course that India planned to undertake. He pledged, “The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity…The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.” And in this direction, he defined the temples of Modern India in the speech while inaugurating Bhakra Nangal dam. A report in HT archives describes it this way; “with great feeling the Prime Minister described these sites as ‘temples and places of worship’ where thousands of human beings were engaged in great constructive activity for the benefit of millions of their fellow beings.”   

The phrase’ Temples of Modern India’ was the underlying theme for conceptualising the public sectors and educational institutions, promoting the scientific temper, health facilities, and academies for promoting culture and what have you. The nearly four to five decades of journey riding this undercurrent of ‘Modern Temples’ was to be turned upside down in the decades of 1980s when, on one side, the response to the Shah Bano fiasco of dealing with minorities opened the floodgates of divisive politics. The communal forces unleashed a massive propaganda war against the religious minorities. At the same time, affirmative action for the downtrodden and the implementation of the Mandal Commission gave a fillip to temple politics, which was already in the strategy books of Hindu nationalists.

In contrast to Nehru’s ‘Temples of Modern India’, the search for ‘temples underneath the mosque’ brought the Babri Mosque dispute to the fore. The RSS progeny BJP was born (1980) wearing the clothes of ‘Gandhian Socialism’ with Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who posed as a moderate, at the helm. He was steeped in the RSS ideology. He wrote Hindu Tan Man-Hindu Jeevan (Hindu soul and body-Hindu life) and masked his Hindu nationalist politics with élan. He yielded his place to Lal Krishna Advani, who came up with the slogan “Mandir Vahin Banayengain” (We will build the temple where Babri mosque is located).

The RSS Combine successfully created a perception that Lord Ram was born precisely at the spot where the mosque is located. Ram Rath Yatra gained more muscle after implementing the Mandal Commission recommendations. This yatra left a series of trails of violence. In the wake of L.K. Advani’s rath yatra, nearly 1,800 people died in different parts of India around 1990. This yatra was aborted when Lalu Yadav arrested Advani.

The mosque was demolished on 6th December 1992 by the Kar Sevaks, some selected ones who had well rehearsed the demolition. Advani, Joshi and Uma Bharati were sitting on the stage from where the slogan, Ek Dhakka Aur do, Babri Masjid Tod do (Give one more push, break the Babri Mosque) and “ye to kevel Jhanki hai Kashi Mathura baki hai” (this is just the beginning, Kashi Mathura will follow). The demolition was followed by violence in Mumbai, Bhopal, Surat and many other places. To cut a long story short, the legal system then bent over backwards to give the verdict of the case based on ‘faith’ while naming those who led the demolition but not giving them any punishment for the crimes they had committed. The judiciary, in all its wisdom or lack of it, gave the whole Babri Mosque land to the “Hindu Side”.

In the gleeful aftermath of this ‘success’ by the RSS combine, considerable funds were collected from home and abroad, and a massive temple is ready to be inaugurated by the Prime Minister himself with all Hindu rituals. This ceremony will be undertaken by the head of a ‘formally secular’ state. Babri Masjid was a regular election plank until it was demolished, and after that, the building of the ‘grand Ram Temple’ was part of BJP’s election manifestos and promises. Violence shot up with increasing intensity and regularity, along with the ghettoisation of the Muslim community, communal polarisation and the rise of the electoral might of the BJP.

The present plight is well summed up by A M Singh, “Since coming to power, much of the BJP’s political discourse has exacerbated communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims. Their actions have followed suit, with the abrogation of Article 370 in the Indian Constitution and the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in 2019... By redefining and remanufacturing Indian citizenship on the principles of Hindutva, the BJP government has broken the fate and legacy of India’s secularism enshrined in its constitution.” Now, a ghettoised Muslim community has been pushed to the margins as second-class citizens.

As the time for the temple’s inauguration approaches, efforts are on to mobilise a large section of Hindus around this. Many NRIs are preparing for the occasion in America and other countries by organising different programs. At home, all the progeny of RSS has been activated to mobilise the Hindus for the occasion, either by visiting the new temple or the local temples and performing rituals.

There are minor controversies about who has been invited and excluded. Lal Krishna Advani, the Chief architect of the demolition movement and his close aide Murali Manohar Joshi were initially advised by the temple trust not to visit the inauguration due to their old age and the biting cold in Ayodhya; on second thought, VHP, the overarching organisation has invited them.

As Babri’s demolition helped these sectarian politics to come to power, the inauguration of the temple seems to be yet another mechanism to consolidate polarisation and reap electoral dividends. Many special trains and buses are being planned for the occasion. Temple politics has reached its acme.

It is time to recall Nehru’s concept of “Temples of Modern India’ with the promotion of scientific temper! Currently, religiosity and blind faith are being heightened. As a nation emerging from colonial darkness, his strategy ensured a direction where the ‘last person in the line’ was to be the primary focus. However, the politics revolving around the Ram Temple, to be followed by temples in Kashi and Mathura, the deprivations of the ‘last person’ and promises of Nehru’s ‘Tryst with Destiny’ have been dumped aside, along with holding him responsible for all the ills of the country!