Three decades after Hindu mobs tore down a historical mosque, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the consecration of a grand Hindu temple at the same site on Monday in a political move to boost his party ahead of a crucial national vote.
Experts say the temple, dedicated to Hinduism’s most revered deity Lord Ram, will cement Modi’s legacy — enduring but also contentious — as one of India’s most consequential leaders, who has sought to transform the country from a secular democracy into an avowedly Hindu nation.
“Right from the beginning, Modi was driven by marking his permanency in history. He has ensured this with the Ram Temple,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, an expert in Hindu nationalism and author of a book on Modi.
Many see the temple’s opening as the beginning of the election campaign for Modi, an avowed nationalist who has been widely accused of espousing Hindu supremacy in an officially secular India. Modi’s Hindu nationalist party is expected to once again exploit religion for political gain in the upcoming national elections in April or May and secure power for a third consecutive term.
Christ, this asshole.
It’s a constant source of frustration for me that building your political power on promises to elevate a dominant ethnicity or faith over a minority group is such a consistently successful strategy.
And, like … where’s this going? If feels like narratively, rising ethnonationalism never stops itself. It just gets bolder and bolder until something explodes. This feels like the early years of another of history’s ‘oh shit’ moments.
Christ, this asshole.
It’s actually Rama, this asshole, apparently.
That got a laugh outta me.
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Disagree. Most democracies, even though on paper are secular, always have imprints of the dominant religion. Democracies dominant with Christianity haven’t “exploded”, so why would this ?
First, I just want to say that I don’t agree with your premise (I don’t think Christianity is a common feature of successful democracies), but now importantly, I don’t think your sentiments disagree with anything I said.
I don’t mind if someone’s ideology is shaped by faith. My lament was about ethno/religious supremacy.
My point is, as an example, democracies with dominant religion as Christianity has its religious imprints within the governing body. A simple example to prove this is that all public holidays mostly are serving the dominant religion. (I didn’t say Christianity is a common trait of successful democracies).
Wouldn’t etho/religious supremacy apply here ? Why do you have the lens when you look at a country like India ?
I think we might be talking past each other in some way.
Ethno/religious supremacy is very different than religious influence.
You can have a political identity that is shaped by your religion and be fully supportive of the rights of immigrants and other religious groups, etc. That’s advancing the belief that your religion or ethnic group should have sole authority over state power.
Germany’s Christian Democratics: religious, but not supremacist. Germany’s National Socialist German Workers party: not religious, very supremacist.
Again my point and you still haven’t answered. Going by your words, why do you think in India, people are not “supportive of rights of immigrants and other religious groups” ?
They probably are most culturally, religiously, linguistically etc diverse than any other country in the world. Yet minor issues aside they have decades of peaceful co existence.
I assume you are not from India, so why would you look at a country like that and have an opinion that they are heading to something bad. I’m genuinely curious.
Edit 1 - To add another point they have the most population in the world even. So, arguably, you are looking at the most complicated, functioning democracy in the world.
Did you read the article? I’m not talking about the country of India: I’m talking about Narendra Modi and the BJP. The article is about how he’s a Hindu nationalist and his political coalition has built their political success on persecuting Muslims.
Many see the temple’s opening as the beginning of the election campaign for Modi, an avowed nationalist who has been widely accused of espousing Hindu supremacy in an officially secular India. Modi’s Hindu nationalist party is expected to once again exploit religion for political gain in the upcoming national elections in April or May and secure power for a third consecutive term.
I’m talking about Prime Minister Modi. And I’m not calling him a Hindu supremacist because he’s Hindu: it’s because he’s a supremacist.
My skydaddy can beat up your skydaddy!
-Wisdom of the 21st century
A correction is required for the unaware. The mosque was built on an ancient temple.
Islam often uses older religious churches/temples for new mosques.
Hagia Sophia In Istanbul is a great example.
_ Hagia Sophia (lit. ‘Holy Wisdom’; Turkish: Ayasofya; Greek: Ἁγία Σοφία, romanized: Hagía Sofía; Latin: Sancta Sapientia), officially the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque (Turkish: Ayasofya-i Kebir Cami-i Şerifi),[3] is a mosque and a major cultural and historical site in Istanbul, Turkey. The last of three church buildings to be successively erected on the site by the Eastern Roman Empire, it was completed in 537 AD. The site was an Eastern Orthodox church from 360 AD to 1204, when it was converted to a Catholic church following the Fourth Crusade.[4] It was reclaimed in 1261 and remained Eastern Orthodox until the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. It served as a mosque until 1935, when it became a museum. In 2020, the site once again became a mosque._
All religions use old holy sites for new places of worship. It is a pretty standard way of reducing the tension around displacing a religion. At the same time marking it easier to get people to convert. They can worship at the same place or on the same day. The only thing that has changed is the name of the god.
To say one or another religion does this more is just not true
In case of Hagia Sophia, the structure was kept more or less the same, with some features added to make it a mosque. Mosque that was built at the place article is talking about completely razed previous structure (verified by archaeological survey of India) that was built at believed birthplace for one of the more prominent deity and a new mosque was later torn down by crowds in 1992.
Supreme court in India around 2019 decided that since this site holds a lot more significance for one religion than other (no real religion wide belief for location) the land in question would be allocated to Hindus while another location would be allocated to Muslims to reconstruct the mosque.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demolition_of_the_Babri_Masjid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_Mandir
Not claiming anything about Modi, just trying to present unbiased facts.
My favorite is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_Mosque. It’s been a holy place under various religions since the Iron Age.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Experts say the temple, dedicated to Hinduism’s most revered deity Lord Ram, will cement Modi’s legacy — enduring but also contentious — as one of India’s most consequential leaders, who has sought to transform the country from a secular democracy into an avowedly Hindu nation.
Modi’s Hindu nationalist party is expected to once again exploit religion for political gain in the upcoming national elections in April or May and secure power for a third consecutive term.
Made into a national event by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, the temple’s opening in Ayodhya — a small city in northern India that has been a historical flashpoint — is expected to resonate deeply with Hindu voters.
In the early 1990s, then a little-known local leader in his native Gujarat state, Modi also helped organize public agitation that aimed to shore up support for the construction of what is now Ram Temple at the former Babri Mosque site.
The dispute ended in 2019 when, in a controversial decision, India’s Supreme Court called the mosque’s destruction “an egregious violation of the rule of law,” but granted the site to Hindus.
Rebuilding the temple at the disputed site has been part of BJP’s election strategy for decades, but it was Modi — rising to power in 2014 on a wave of Hindu revivalism — who finally oversaw that promise after attending its groundbreaking ceremony in 2020.
The original article contains 965 words, the summary contains 231 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is such a biased news article. I expect better from AP but then you see who wrote it and understand it well.
Hinduism’s most revered deity Lord Ram
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