Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi participated on Monday in major celebrations for the consecration of the Rama temple in Ayodhya, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, in northern India. Rama is one of the most important deities of Hinduism and the new temple was built in what is believed to be his birthplace. However, it is also the place where a sixteenth-century mosque stood, destroyed by a crowd of 150 thousand Hindu faithful in 1992, in what is considered one of the most complicated and problematic events in India’s recent history.
The cult of Prince Rama is central to Hindu nationalism: thanks to the extraordinary success of a television series dedicated to the story of his exploits around his mythological figure, since the 1980s a growing movement has gained strength that wants to bring the Hindu religion back to the center of Indian politics and society, overcoming a secular and secular conception of the state.
Modi and his party, the Bharatiya Janata (BJP), have presented themselves as defenders of Hinduism, practiced by 80 percent of Indians, even with clearly discriminatory decisions towards minorities, especially Muslims. Rama has become the symbol of this “Hindu awakening” and today the return to a mythical era of the “kingdom of Rama” is recurrent in the rhetoric of the governing party, which also uses religion as one of the political tools for maintaining power. Modi has been in office since 2014 and will seek a third mandate in next spring’s elections: the consecration of the new Rama temple is the crowning achievement and symbol of his politics.
Rama is the protagonist of the Sanskrit epic poem Ramayana, written in a period between the seventh and third centuries BC: according to the Hindu religion he is the seventh incarnation of the god Vishnu, as well as one of the most popular. The poem tells how Rama, heir to the kingdom of Kosala, with its capital in Ayodhya, was forced into a 14-year exile and to fight with an evil empire to ransom his kidnapped wife Sita. At the end of epic adventures and many vicissitudes Rama will be able to return to the throne: the figure of Rama is described as the perfect man: just, courageous, ready to sacrifice, reluctant to use his enormous powers except to re-establish goodness. The poem allegorically recounts the rights, duties, and social responsibilities of the individual who follows the dharmathe virtuous path.
(AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)
The cult of Rama is centuries old in India, especially in the Hindi-speaking regions: the prince’s victory over the forces of evil and his return home is the basis of the Diwali festival, perhaps the most important of the Hindu religion. But it was in a certain sense revitalized and also transformed into a political issue in the second half of the last century, and in particular after the partition of the former British Indian colony, which was divided in 1947 into two independent states: India (with a Hindu majority ) and Pakistan (with a Muslim majority).
– Read also: The partition of India and Pakistan, 75 years ago
In 1987, Doordarshan began airing on Indian public television, a TV series then more commonly referred to as a telefilm or drama, based on the epic poem Ramayana. The Indian state was then highly secular and religious themes rarely landed on television programs: the story of Rama’s deeds was a moment of rupture with this tradition. But above all it was a huge, unprecedented success: the screenplay it had 78 episodes lasting just over half an hour, and was broadcast once a week, on Sunday morning. It became the most watched program in the history of Indian television, with 80-100 million viewers (one tenth of the total population) and a share of 80 percent.
The public approached us almost with a religious attitude, as in a collective ritual. The then correspondent of the BBC in India, Soutik Biswas, wrote in 2011: «I remember that the series practically paralyzed India on Sunday mornings: the streets were deserted, the shops were closed and people cleaned and garlanded their televisions before starting to watch it».
The protagonist of the drama (Editor 0902, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
That series contributed to breaking the unanimous consensus on the need for a secular state and society, and gathered the growing pressure of Hindu nationalism which was intercepted above all by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The series was mostly politically inoffensive and did not identify any “enemies” other than vague forces of evil. In the following years the Hindu movement instead he made the figure of Rama undergo a further evolutionproposing him as a champion of Hinduism in opposition not only to secularism, but also to religious minorities.
In this operation the dispute over Rama’s birthplace and the presence of a mosque on the same site was central. The debate around Ayodhya has ancient origins, but it became even more intense since the middle of the last centurywhen the requests of the Hindus to be able to build a temple there became increasingly insistent: according to the Hindu version, the mosque would have been built right where a Hindu temple previously existed.
Muslims deny this reconstruction, and the study of documents by independent archaeologists has never found reliable evidence that confirmed the Hindu theses. The BJP, Modi’s party, animated and led the protests and in 1992 a demonstration that was supposed to be peaceful turned into the destruction of the mosque, which occurred in a few hours. In the following days, violent clashes broke out between Hindus and Muslims: it is estimated that around 2,000 people were killed.
– Read also: The destruction of the Ayodhya mosque
Starting from those years, Rama’s defense became the subject of greater tension and was accompanied with increasing frequency by episodes of violence. The phrase “Jai Shri Ram”, translatable as “Victory for the god Ram” was initially a devotional phrase, but over time it turned into a slogan that often accompanies violent actions and the repression of religious minorities. Songs glorifying Rama and openly threatening Muslims in particular are popular on YouTube and on Indian social media.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi pays homage to Rama in Ayodhya (Press Information Bureau via AP)
During the ten years of Modi’s rule, Hindu nationalism has become central and organic to the exercise of power. The opposition accuse Modi of having now compromised the secularity of the state and of wanting to transform India into a Hindu country from all points of view: over the course of these years a law has been approved which openly discriminates against Muslims, the autonomy of Kashmir (a Muslim majority region) and above all, episodes of religious violence have multiplied, mostly tolerated or only timidly condemned.
The legal dispute over Ayodhya ended with a Supreme Court ruling authorizing the construction of the Hindu temple. Today government-linked television and official documents completely omit the history of the 16th century mosque. The opening of the Rama temple, a few months before the elections, was interpreted by many as the definitive sign of the victory of Hindu nationalism in Indian society.
(AP Photo/Gautam Singh, File)
The cult of Rama is omnipresent and during the 2020 coronavirus lockdown, which lasted 21 days in India, public television DD decided to rebroadcast the 1987 drama on Rama. Two episodes were broadcast a day, one in the morning and one in the evening: it was the most watched program of that period, with a record 77 million viewers for a single episode.