When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week led the consecration of a massive new Hindu temple on the ruins of a demolished Muslim mosque in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya, he demonstrated the lengths he will go to secure its re-election this year.
Not that stoking religious strife is a new tactic for the 73-year-old Modi. She came to power, and now clings to it, on the back of militant Hindu nationalism and the threat of anti-Muslim violence.
In 2005, Modi, then the top official in the Indian state of Gujarat, became the first and only person to be banned from entering the United States under a little-known immigration law that makes foreign officials ineligible. eligible for visas if they are responsible for “particularly serious deficiencies”. violations of religious freedom.”
U.S. officials had determined that Modi stood by during the Hindu riots that killed more than 1,000 Muslims in the state of Gujarat in 2002. The visa ban was lifted only when he became prime minister in 2014.
Today, Modi's brand of militant Hindu supremacy has replaced political pluralism as India's dominant ideology, threatening the nation's status as a secular republic.
As a foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, I saw the beginnings of India's undemocratic slide on a sunny day in December 1992, on a contested piece of land in Ayodhya.
Thousands of Hindu pilgrims, white-bearded priests, dhoti-clad holy men and other devotees who had gathered for a political rally suddenly stormed the historic Babri Mosque, built in the 16th century by Babur, the first Mughal emperor, in the place of the supposed birthplace of the Hindu deity Ram.
The Hindu mob destroyed the mosque, brick by brick, with pikes, pickaxes and their bare hands. They tore down guard towers with hooks and climbed barefoot over barbed wire barricades. Foreign journalists were persecuted and beaten. They beat me with bamboo and a brick.
The destruction of the mosque sparked some of the worst religious pogroms in India since independence in 1947. Entire Muslim neighborhoods were burned and families massacred. In response, anti-Hindu riots broke out in Pakistan and Bangladesh, India's Muslim neighbors. A Newsweek cover warned of a “Holy War” on the subcontinent; its rival Time considered communal violence an “Unholy War.”
More than three decades later, much of India came to a standstill on January 22 to watch Modi consecrate Ram Mandir, a richly decorated $220 million temple built on top of the destroyed Babri mosque. In many states of India, it was a public holiday. Stock markets and most schools and offices were closed. Government offices closed for half a day.
Non-stop television coverage showed the prime minister placing a lotus flower next to the jet-black idol of the Ram in the temple's inner sanctum, prostrating before it and practically declaring Hinduism as the state religion. An Indian air force helicopter dropped flower petals outside, priests blew conch shells and chanted, but Modi was the star.
“Ram is the faith of India, the foundation of India,” he told a rapt crowd in Hindi, according to the Times of India.. “Ram is the thought of India, Ram is the law of India. … Ram is politics [of India].”
Modi has become the “high priest of Hinduism,” the prime minister's biographer, Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, told the Indian website Rediff.com after the ceremony. “We are very close to becoming[ing] a theocratic state.”
Such an idea would be anathema to India's once-revered founding leaders Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. They argued that the government should embrace all religions, not impose one over the others. Those secular values are enshrined in the Indian constitution.
But secularism has declined as Modi's right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party has steadily gained power by blurring the lines between Hinduism and the state. Muslims have their own countries, Modi supporters maintain. Why shouldn't we?
Here's why: Although 80% of India's 1.4 billion people identify as Hindu, 200 million Muslims and tens of millions of Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and others do not. Human rights groups say non-Hindus are increasingly treated as second-class citizens.
The “Modi government has adopted laws and policies that discriminate against religious minorities, especially Muslims,” Human Rights Watch warns on its website. “This…has emboldened Hindu nationalist groups to attack members of minority communities or civil society groups with impunity.”
In the days since Modi presided over temple rituals in Ayodhya, Hindu mobs have rampaged through several cities and towns. News reports recounted the damage: Muslim-owned shops destroyed in Mumbai, Muslim students beaten in Pune, a Muslim cemetery burned in Bihar, etc.
Modi does not need to inflame anti-Muslim prejudices to win re-election. He has a 76% approval rating in the latest polls and is on track to become the first Indian prime minister since Nehru to win three consecutive terms.
But the danger of more clashes is growing.
Hindu nationalists have filed lawsuits to remove hundreds of Mughal-era mosques that they claim were erected on top of other ancient Hindu temples. Their main targets include a mosque supposedly built on the birthplace of Krishna, the Hindu god of compassion, and a second in Varanasi, said to be the sacred abode of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction.
“People will always remember this date, this moment,” Modi said in Ayodhya last week, hailing the dawn of a “new era.”
I'm afraid you may be right.
Bob Drogin is a former Los Angeles Times reporter and editor.
