Modi’s Ram Mandir: Use of History in Authoritarian Populism

• In Event: 50268 - Religion and Nationalism

Abstract

Before the 2024 national elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Narendra Modi held a grand opening for Ram Mandir, a Hindu temple constructed on contested land in Ayodhya, India. The temple materialized the decades-long promise of Hindutva to deliver a place of worship for the mythological deity Ram, in his alleged birthplace. Yet, a mosque, Babri Masjid, stood on this geographical location for centuries, which Hindu extremists vandalized periodically culminating in a deadly incident in 1992 when the rioters attacked and demolished the monument. After the demolition, construction was illegal till the Prime Minister Modi won his second term in 2019, when he mobilized the Supreme Court to decide in favor of a permit and embarked on a massive building project. We use the opening of the temple to bring to bear the role of narratives in authoritarian populism. Specifically, we look at the fruits and limits of coopting a religious script for nationalist purposes. Looking at the journey of the myth of Ramayan within the historical context of the Republic of India we deconstruct the iterative process of secularization and. We investigate the mechanisms of consecration of the temple, and discursive turns necessary to create a horizontal “people” from a vertical religion. This exercise helps us answer the question: how is a narrative structured around a strict class system being used for populist aims? Relying on interviews during the 2024 national elections, we make sense how the electorate reacts to the process of sacralization. We zoom in to people for whom Ram remains sacred, but the politician who tries to benefit from this process become profane. Modi’s trying to equate himself with Ram seems to have gone too far and does not hail people to be empathetic to his political cause.

Authors

• Shivani Choudhary, Yale University

• Yagmur Karakaya, Yale University