By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal
India’s ruling party won a resounding victory in regional elections last November, wresting control of key states away from its main opposition, in a major boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who looks set to win a third term in national elections scheduled for May.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh states from the Indian National Congress and registered a record fifth term in central Madhya Pradesh. More than 160 million people, one-sixth of India's total electorate, were eligible to vote in the regional polls.
The defeat of the secular Congress party in the three states, which send 62 members to the Lok Sabha, the 543-seat lower house of parliament, may dash its hopes of coming back to power at the national level.
The BJP’s rise has been fuelled by the Hindu nationalist ideology known as Hindutva, which has been transforming this multi-national country into one privileging Hindu Indians, some 80 per cent of the population, while marginalizing other faiths, in particular Islam.
On Jan. 22 Modi inaugurated the Ram Mandir temple in Ayodhya, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, the heart of the country. Devotees believe it is built on the birthplace of Lord Ram, a sacred Hindu deity. India’s decisive break with secularism as a semi-official state ideology could be said to have begun in this city.
The Ram Temple had been located where the Babri Masjid, or Mosque of Babur, was built. The mosque stood for centuries before it was torn down in 1992 by Hindu nationalists, to shift India’s secular foundations toward a more visibly Hindu identity.
Modi’s supporters feel that India was ruled by Muslim invaders for too long and, finally, Hindus are asserting themselves.
The demolition of the mosque, named for the 16th century Muslim founder of the Mughal Empire, sparked deadly religious riots around India, killing about 2,000 people, most of them Muslims.
In 2019, India’s Supreme Court awarded the site to the Hindus, paving the way for the construction of the Ram Temple. It marked the culmination of a decade-long campaign to reclaim a disputed religious site as Hindu ground and the moment where the project of building a Hindu nation became officially endorsed by the state.
Ayodhya had seen a massive transformation ahead of the event, including expanded roads, and a new airport, and railway station. However, the Congress Party-led opposition boycotted the inauguration ceremony.
Apart from the $6 billion makeover of Ayodhya, the federal government has spent nearly $120 million to develop dozens of Hindu pilgrimage sites in the past decade.
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of “The Demolition and the Verdict: Ayodhya and the Project to Reconfigure India,” calls it a political project that has reconfigured India. “It is a point where Hindu politics entered mainstream Indian politics.”
Nor is this the final debate over religious shrines. There is currently a dispute over the centuries-old Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, one of Hinduism's holiest cities, and the Shahi Idgah mosque in Mathura, both stoking fresh tensions in Uttar Pradesh.
Hindu groups say the Gyanvapi mosque, located in Modi’s own constituency, was built after a temple at the site was demolished by Muslim rulers in the 17th century. The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), a right-wing religious organization, has called on the Muslim community to voluntarily give up the area where it is located.
India’s Supreme Court recently stopped a survey of the 17th century Shahi Idgah mosque to ascertain if it contains Hindu relics. Hard-liners maintain that the mosque is built over the birthplace of the Hindu god Krishna. They claim it was built after the demolition of a Hindu temple, insisting it had been ordered by Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb after he attacked the city and destroyed its temples in 1670.
The Haji Malang Muslim dargah, a Sufi Muslim shrine on the outskirts of Mumbai in the western state of Maharashtra has also become a polarizing issue. Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde of the regionalist Hindu ultranationalist political party Shiv Sena in January stirred controversy by asserting that the structure was really a temple belonging to Hindus and declared his commitment to “liberating” it. Hindus, who refer to the structure as Malanggad, have clashed with Muslim devotees and locals.
Many Muslims view these moves as attempts to undermine their rights to free worship and religious expression. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, an Indian political scientist, has stated that the purpose of reclaiming these shrines is to show Muslims their place.
“The purpose is not to craft a connection with Shiva or Krishna, the purpose is to permanently indict minorities. It is to use a sacred place of worship as a weaponized tool against another community,” Mehta wrote.
None of this is “ancient history.” The Muslim Mughals ruled over India’s majority Hindus for centuries prior to British rule, and they built thousands of mosques, forts and other landmarks, including the Taj Mahal, which houses the tomb of the emperor Shah Jahan’s wife.
Though India was partitioned into two states – India and Muslim-majority Pakistan – in 1947, India’s 1.4 billion people still include some 200 million Muslims, about 15 per cent of the country’s people. They constitute the third largest Muslim population in the world, after Indonesia and Pakistan.
For Hindu nationalists there remains lingering resentment over this fact, which can be stoked into communal violence.
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