Modi to open Ram Mandir built on martyred Babri Mosque proving India's Hindutva extremism

A decades-long flashpoint in India’s Hindu nationalistic politics is poised to reach a climax next week.

The Ram Mandir, a Hindu temple, will be inaugurated on Jan 22, on a contested holy site once home to the Babri mosque in India’s northern city of Ayodhya.

The mosque built in 1527 was demolished by a Hindu mob amounting to 75000 in 1992 due to Islamophobic violence.

A subsequent report commissioned by the Indian government found dozens of people, many of whom are now BJP political leaders, responsible for orchestrating and encouraging the attacks.

One of India's most well-known journalists and a well-known thorn in Modi's BJP's side, Rana Ayyub, claims that the Ram Mandir campaign has been a mainstay of Modi's career.

"His entire career has been based on Ayodhya."

As a local BJP leader, the now Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi led a rally demanding the building of Ram Mandir in the place of the mosque, he promised not to enter Ayodhya until the temple is built. Nearly three decades later, now the temple is being built and Modi will be leading the inauguration ceremony, likening it to "the day India gained independence."

Many opposition leaders have refused to attend the ceremony, calling it "undemocratic" and a "political ploy than a religious ceremony."

2024 is the year of elections in India and many believe this to be a political move and part of his strategy the combination of Hindu nationalism with Social welfare, a combination that works well for him.

Freedom House now classifies India, once heralded as the world's largest democracy, as only "partly free" on account of the "rise in persecution affecting the Muslim population." And there are signs that the Ayodhya temple may only mark a new era of the Hindu supremacist war on mosques.