“WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC…”

So reads the Indian Constitution’s Preamble after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi updated it with the words “socialist” and “secular” during The Emergency in 1976. Indira had fulfilled her father, Jawaharlal Nehru’s, ideology with force. It was the high tide of Nehruvianism as an anglicized elite ruled India with an iron fist. The average Indian was too busy starving or viciously competing with other Indians over dwindling pools of resources and opportunities. There was no opportunity to whisper of a grand mandir emerging in Ayodhya, debate over the necessity of the exiled ideology of Hindutva, or even watch India’s storied epics come alive on electric boxes beaming across bucolic villages and chaotic cities. However, Indians would soon climb the hierarchy of Maslow, and the Anglophone elite of India would fall to their own mistakes. 

As time ambled forward, the Indian Republic survived various economic and political difficulties, including even threats of secession. With India stretched at its seams, ugly truths would emerge. The Hindu majority saw India’s potential secessions, almost all in minority-dominated states, as an insult to their magnanimity. Activists began to point to laws that legally discriminated against Hindus and favored non-Hindus. Hindus started feeling a hot pang of injustice in their bellies. Their stomachs began to swelter. A grand march was on the horizon.

With India’s Nehruvian project unraveling, an ideological vacuum opened. But India was set to change not from a grand battle of competing elites debating over ideological minutiae and stale policy discussions. The caretakers of the British Raj would soon meet their match, a ragtag group of ordinary Indians who stared down the might of the Indian state and its storied secularist ideals. The Kar Sevaks, led by a fledgling party called the BJP, would be the architects of a grand Indian schism and an even grander Indian dream.

The Carvers of Destiny

Over the centuries, the Hindu had grown wretched. His holy places defiled. His leaders joined the ranks of enemies. His community shattered into squabbles and squinting in envy at each other. His songs silenced. His arts erased. His temples broken. His spirit suppressed. But the Dharma of the Hindu is said to be eternal, Sanatana. Even in the bleakest of times, it springs back, an organic element of hope and power. 

Jonah Blank, the author who wrote the magnificent book Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God, notes how many Hindus were still resting in a Gandhian slumber during the events preceding the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. The charisma and energy of the BJP-RSS were a direct catalyst to the awakening of Hindu masses and the conversion of various alloys of Hindus into a red-hot pillar of iron carried by Advani’s chariot of destiny. 

This return of Dharma was not forged by warriors and sages like in the ancient tales. It was carved by cobblers and drivers, laborers and poets, activists and cooks, shopkeepers and lawyers, tailors and barbers, manual scavengers and farmers. Every strata of society contributed to this momentous cause. And that is precisely why the Kar Sevak changed India forever.

The Kar Sevaks overflowed with defiance. An air of revolution traveled in each of their heavy breaths as they heaved through bullets and borders to eventually break Babri. They had no desire for riches or reputation. The humble young men only yearned for their Ram. In this legendary quest, the Kar Sevaks would inadvertently fire the first great silo against the body politic of the Indian Republic. Indian “secularism” would be mortally wounded in the aftermath. 

In the past, BR Ambedkar had observed, “Indeed, the ideal Hindu must be like a rat living in his own hole, refusing to have any contact with others. There is an utter lack among the Hindus of what the sociologists call ‘consciousness of kind.’ There is no Hindu consciousness of kind. In every Hindu, the consciousness that exists is the consciousness of his caste. That is the reason why the Hindus cannot be said to form a society or a nation.” The BJP-RSS’s broad-based approach during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement has repudiated Ambedkar’s scintillating thesis, remaking Indian politics and, more crucially, Hindu society. This heroic mission drew from every part of Hindudom, arranging each Hindu shoulder to shoulder, chanting the same cries, and exalting them all as equal devotees of their Lord Ram. In this great yajna of a new era, all Hindus were tasked as participants in a sacrifice for the ages.

This pan-Hindu aura is pivotal in understanding the importance of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Perhaps nowhere else in Hindu history was there such a broad-based movement that stretched across India’s diverse terrain and Hinduism’s manifold theology. This story would have a happy ending for Lord Ram’s devotees. In the end, the culmination would reside with a man who has become emblematic and avataric of the Hindutva movement at large.

The Priest-King

“People say: why don’t you respect the court’s verdict? Can courts decide whether Ram was born or not?” So said Lal Krishna Advani as his chariot of fire raced past India’s delaying and dallying court system. Advani and his compatriot, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, spearheaded the conquest of Ayodhya and, as a result, the reincarnation of India. Under their wing was an ambitious young fellow party man named Narendra Damodardas Modi. In the years to come, his stock would rise and clash with the senior duo, eventually eclipsing them into becoming something much, much more.

The mysterious machinations of the Indian Supreme Court, a den of nepotism and detached elitism in India, had led to a century-defining judgment in the restoration of Ram Janmasthan Temple and relocation of the mosque that formerly occupied the site. Most watchers of India understand the nudge that Modi’s leviathan election mandate in 2019 gave the bench before the judgment. A court case going on for centuries had finally found its culmination, favorable to the Hindus, just after the victory of India’s most avowedly Hindu Prime Minister. What a coincidence.

Like any other successful politician, Modi seized the stage. The Pran Pratishtha would be not just a religious ritual but a political ritual as well, a fusion of both into one. On the hallowed day when the idol of Lord Ram opened His eyes, it was Modi who was the chief yajaman. This ancient ritual, fabled in India’s ancient history, is not just a consecration of a divine entity but also functioned to signal imperial prowess and power with the lord of the dominion presiding over the ritual as a witness. Frescos and sculptures depict such incidents to etch them into memory. Technology not only ensured the images of Pran Pratishtha would last long beyond rock and paint but also streamed them across India in a moment that captured the Indian mind in a way not seen since freedom from the British Raj. If August 15, 1947 was India’s political independence day, then January 22, 2024 was India’s cultural independence day. All of this was done with Modi omnipresent in both visuals and audio. In one of his most stirring speeches in front of a saffron sea of ascetics and priests, Modi made history rhyme with Nehru’s “Tryst with Destiny” speech, invoking Lord Ram’s eternal ties with Indian civilization and the Indian people.

But what does this all really mean? Sure, one could say this cemented Modi into Indian textbooks, but in reality, the ramifications are much more profound. Modi would reconcile two emerging streams of Hindutva, streams that may one day become parallel tributaries jostling for dominance in India’s political plain.

On one hand, Modi was very attentive to the ritualistic rigor needed for such a holy occasion. While being the chief yajaman on the 22nd, he passed on yajamanship to Anil and Usha Mishra on the grounds that he was a bachelor. Modi would endure an 11-day fast and ritual regimen that even many seers thought was too arduous for someone his age. Various seers across India were consulted and utilized as overseers for millennia-old traditions in consecrating the idol. Modi made it a point to illustrate the lineage of the moment to ancestral practices and adhered to the beliefs of over a billion adherents. While many urban and upper-class Hindus may pan on about how Hinduism is a way of life and religion means having a pure heart and not getting too stuck in rituals, the large mass of Indians still place importance on the mysticism of rituals and the power of pure, blind faith, Modi included.

While the aforementioned channeled Hinduism’s hoary past into the present, Modi also hinted at Hinduism’s future. This isn’t necessarily linked to anything Modi did but more so to who Modi is. Modi is a Shudra. In ancient India, this word denoting India’s lowest caste would be used as an insult to those born into it. “Low-born” was frequently the slur hurled at such people. Yet most Hindus today are and most likely in the past were Shudras. Modi has worn his birth into a lower class as a sword and his lower caste as a shield throughout his political career to a devastatingly potent effect. For this mass of Hindus and those adjacent to them, Modi has accomplished what no Indian king or priest could ever. A low-born tea seller would preside over the most monumental Hindu celebration and victory in millennia. For Hindus of depressed or middling strata in society, one of their own had granted all of Hindudom deliverance and was chosen by Lord Ram Himself for the task. This was a realization of Hindutva, a Hindu unity that showed that any Hindu could rise to the top of Hindu society. Modi not only etched himself into Indian civilizational history but also the hearts and minds of Hindus hereafter, all that while being a “low-born.”

But beyond political machinations and societal evolutions, there is something much deeper to the fervor that has gripped India in the wake of Lord Ram’s Pran Pratishtha. A spiritual ecstasy has sprawled across every village, town, city, and hinterland.

In Ram’s Name

The name of Lord Ram is said to grant salvation in this Age of Darkness (Kaliyuga). “Ram Ram” still remains a standard greeting in India’s rustic villages of the north. An old cry of worship had now become a cry for war as chants of “Jai Shri Ram” or “Victory to Lord Ram” began to echo from village to village as Advani’s Rath Yatra passed through. This was a campaign to right a wrong beyond battles between political parties. Hindu society’s grievances would be channeled through the hailings of “Jai Shri Ram” as the carapace of the Indian state would shake in the wake of society’s chosen fate.

What many commentators miss is that while the BJP did play a role in galvanizing and radicalizing Hindus, they were essentially throwing sparks on a Himalayan range of tinder across India. There was always a massive latent devotion to Lord Ram across the republic. As soon as Hindus recognized the injustice before their eyes, that devotion took on a new form of kineticism. The wisdom of crowds won out.

This tale of Ram Janmasthan, just as Valmiki’s sacred song did so thousands of years ago, touches every aspect of Indian society and every corner of India. It is beyond simple politics as slanted and stilted Western commentators make it out to be. In the run-up to the Pran Pratishtha, various people across the country made pilgrimages by foot, with some, including Shubham Garg, even doing prostrations the entire way to the consecration site. Saraswati Devi had taken a vow of silence since the fall of Babri until her Lord Ram returned to his birthplace. The region of Mithila, the homeland of Sita, has been enthralled in celebration with traditional gifts for a husband streaming into Ayodhya as they view this as the long-awaited return of their son-in-law. For 500 years, the Suryavanshi Thakurs of Ayodhya had forgone traditional symbols of pride, including the turban, leather shoes, and umbrellas, as penance for being unable to save the birthplace temple of Ayodhya. As Lord Ram’s murti’s eyes opened, a tearful pride returned atop the Thakurs’ heads as saffron turbans ended generations of penance. Across India, saffron flags have sprung in neighborhoods rich and poor, urban and rural, east, west, north, and south. Saffron-clad ascetics and priests descended upon Ayodhya to conduct ancient rituals that were unbroken for millennia, welcoming their God home.

As my friend Akshay told me, this is an event that has not been seen in millennia. For many Hindus, this is as meaningful as the legendary return of Lord Ram to Ayodhya from his victorious war in Sri Lanka, chronicled in the Ramayana. The Pran Pratishtha has theological significance to Hindus beyond mere time and space; it is engulfed with the power of belief and divinity. Eons have passed since the return of Ayodhya’s favorite son from an unjust exile. Lord Ram was said to have presided over a golden age after his return.

The word for confidence in Hindi and many other Indian languages is “Ātmavishwās,” which roughly translates into “trust of the soul.” For so long, India’s soul has been long suppressed. The Gangetic plains, the heartland of Hinduism and India’s cultural nucleus for millennia, haven’t seen proper indigenous self-rule for over millennia. But with the Pran Pratishtha of Lord Ram in this downtrodden land filled with downtrodden people, not only has hope returned, but a sense of soul has sprung like a silver geyser. And as a sense of soul arrives, so does confidence in one’s self. With the return of Lord Ram, a new epoch beckons in India, one of self-confidence, compassion, innovation, and an embrace of its soul.

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“The construction of this temple of Ram Lala is also a symbol of peace, patience, mutual harmony and coordination of Indian society. We are seeing that this construction is not giving birth to any fire, but to energy. Ram Mandir has brought inspiration to every section of the society to move forward on the path of a bright future. Ram is not fire. He is energy. He is not conflict but solution. Ram does not belong only to us but to all. Ram is not just present but is infinity.”

-Narendra Modi