Ram temple built on site of razed Babri structure at Ayodhya to open on January 22, 2024

Those who mocked, Ram Mandir wohin banayenge; date nahi batayenge !! will get it on their nose !! 

The consecration ceremony of Lord Ram's idol at the new Ram Temple in Ayodhya is now scheduled for January 22 next year. 

Indian engineering giant Larsen and Toubro is building the temple on a 2.67-acre (1.08 hectares) site inside a 70-acre (28.33 hectares) complex. The second and final phase would be completed in December 2025. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat ad other dignitaries performing rituals to launch the construction of the controversial Ram temple in Ayodhya in August 2020.

"A grand temple of Lord Ram, worshipped by millions of Hindus, will open in January in northern India at a site believed to be his birthplace, fulfilling a promise from the ruling party in a location that was a flashpoint for Hindu-Muslim violence," says a Reuters report. 

The site in the northern town of Ayodhya, where the temple construction is nearing completion, was bitterly contested for decades with both Hindus and Muslims laying claim to it. 

India’s majority Hindus say the site was the birthplace of Lord Ram, and was holy to them long before Muslim Mughals razed a temple at the spot and built the Babri mosque there in 1528. 

The Uttar Pradesh government has started working on a plan to set up a museum in Ayodhya, that will showcase the history of famous temples across the country.

The state government is preparing a detailed blueprint for this project where visitors will get to experience the glorious temples located in varied places, the official said.   

A Hindu mob destroyed the 'mosque' on Dec 6, 1992, triggering riots that killed about 2,000 people across India. Building a Ram temple at the site has been a central, campaign theme of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for more than three decades.

Hindu and Muslim groups have fought over ownership of the site through India’s courts. In 2019, the Supreme Court handed over the land to Hindus and ordered the allotment of a separate plot to Muslims.

Muslim groups were not happy with the verdict but said they would accept it with humility. Nripendra Misra, chairman of the Shri Ramjanmabhoomi Temple Construction Committee, said that the ground floor of the temple will be ready in December and devotees will be allowed to pray after the idol of Lord Ram is moved there in January.

Modi has been invited for the conclusion of prayers by priests in late January, which will mark the opening of the temple, said Misra, a retired bureaucrat who was Modi’s principal secretary, or chief of staff until 2019.

“It will be good if the prime minister is present,” Misra said. Indian engineering giant Larsen and Toubro is building the temple on a 2.67-acre (1.08 hectares) site inside a 70-acre (28.33 hectares) complex, Misra said, adding that the second and final phase would be completed in December 2025.

The project is estimated to cost 15 billion rupees ($181 million) and is entirely funded by donations from 40 million resident Indians that totalled more than 30 billion rupees, he said.

An estimated 100,000 devotees are expected to visit the temple daily in the first months, he added.

BJP leaders and analysts have said that the opening of the temple is expected to boost the party’s fortunes in general elections due by May 2024 when Modi will seek a third term. Asked if the timing of the opening is linked to elections, Misra replied: “It has nothing to do whatsoever with the political elections. This was decided in 2020.”

August 5. 2021 marked the second anniversary of the constitutional amendment initiated by the Narendra Modi government to take away the functional autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state.

A year later, on the same day in 2020, the prime minister laid the foundation stone for a grand Ram temple at Ayodhya on a plot of land where once stood the Babri mosque before its demolition by frenzied mobs of Hindus in 1992.

The two events aren’t mere sociopolitical developments in the recent history of the country but can be seen as symbols of the latent but strong cultural transformation India has undergone ever since Modi became prime minister in 2014. 

“This is the new social order now. We may not see major upheaval or social destabilization. But in the name of anti-elitism what we have got is anti-intellectualism. More precisely it is anti-liberalism,” West Bengal-based social analyst Ramakanto Shanyal said.

2010 : Ayodhya - A day after the verdict  

From an article penned in August 2021 (by blogger) 

The gradual transition perhaps started under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the first prime minister to lead a federal government run by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

It was Vajpayee who conducted India’s nuclear tests on May 11, 1998, triggering jingoistic celebrations across the country that are being carried forward now under Modi.

The bureaucracy and governance system under Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first PM, was generally believed to “think in English” as part of India’s place in the world community.

That has begun to change slowly. So, South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement or the Vietnam War are no more part of intellectual debates among students and media persons in Delhi or Kolkata. The debates now are veering towards provincialism guided by the Hindu-Hindi-Hindustan ideology.

Thus, the recently held state elections in West Bengal became an open contest between native Bengali culture versus the "Hindi and Hindu only" approach of the BJP.

“The media and political opponents of Modi are also responsible for this scenario. The entire focus in the past six-seven years has been on the communalization of India,” observed Tushar Bhadra, a political observer from Modi’s constituency in Varanasi.

He said this phenomenon is not being grasped properly and hence a battle between Bharat (India's traditional Hindi name) and modern India could ensue in the coming years.

Many top officials in the national capital Delhi or in the Hindi heartland state of Uttar Pradesh have not studied abroad or at St. Stephen’s College in Delhi, unlike their predecessors, Bhadra pointed out.

Thus, the real challenge could be the undoing or fall of modern India built over the past seven decades with the emergence of the Hindu intellectual in the past seven years or so.

Sept 30, 2010 --- after the Allahabad High Court verdict

Link -- 2021 article