With controversial temple launch, Modi to start 2024 India re-election bid

For Modi’s BJP, the Ram Mandir, built on the ruins of the demolished Babri Masjid, represents a promise fulfilled.

Ayodhya, India – For hundreds of years, a journey to Ayodhya for many Hindu pilgrims meant a walk down narrow lanes to the Hanuman Garhi Mandir, a temple honouring Hanuman, the monkey god. Now a wide street leads to the shrine, with shops on both sides selling sweetmeats as offerings to the deity. Hanuman Garhi has a brooding dark dome, and the temple has a new coat of red and saffron paint. Its young priests are sprightly and quick.

But the 10th-century temple in the northern Uttar Pradesh state is no longer the main attraction here. Some 500 metres (547 yards) away, a brand new, as yet incomplete, construction has taken hold of India’s attention.

Long queues of young men and women chant “Jai Shri Ram” (Victory to Lord Ram) as they try to enter the complex, guarded zealously by police officers. One policeman helpfully tells them to deposit their mobile phones in a safe. Inside, craftsmen work on large horizontal prefab structures. Others chisel away painstakingly at pillars and rock features. It is not noisy, but there is a buzz of construction activity everywhere.

The queue leads to a statue of Ram, which will give way to a new one that has been selected in a nationwide competition and will be moved to the venue on January 17. Meanwhile, workers race against time, repairing the steps of a nearby baoli or step-well, and building accommodation for pilgrims.

They have a deadline to meet – January 22 – by when they must build enough of the Ram Mandir for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to inaugurate it, amid nationwide frenzy around the project fed and fuelled by the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allied Hindu majoritarian outfits.