The Pulse | Politics | South Asia

Ayodhya’s Ram Temple, Narendra Modi’s Pet Project, is Mired in Corruption

Devotees’ donations have allegedly been siphoned away under the watch of Sangh Parivar leaders. With elections in Uttar Pradesh due next year, the BJP has swung into damage control mode.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi (second from left), RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat (third from left) and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath (second from right) at the consecration ceremony of the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India, on January 22, 2024.

A temple theft scandal has hit India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), perhaps where it hurts them the most. Devotees’ donations worth millions of dollars have allegedly gone missing from Ayodhya’s Ram Temple, the crowning glory of their Hindu nationalist project.

The grand temple, one of India’s most symbolically significant religious sites, has been built at a cost of approximately 19 billion Indian rupees ($210 million).

The investigation is ongoing, and authorities have not yet established the final amount allegedly stolen. Estimates circulating in political statements and media reports range from $21 million to $73.3 million, which differ substantially from the $0.2-0.3 million cited in police investigations.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is already battling myriad scandals in the education sector. But the scam involving the Ayodhya Temple is special. It involves India’s most politically sensitive religious project. It involves organizations belonging to the Sangh Parivar, a family of Hindutva organizations led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP’s ideological-organizational parent.

Modi inaugurated the newly built temple on January 22, 2024. He was present at the consecration of the temple as the mukhya yajman or chief devotee, with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat seated next to him.

The Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust manages the Ayodhya temple. The majority of members on its board are associated with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the religious mobilization arm of the RSS.

Therefore, the scandal touches not only the political leadership of the RSS family but also its religious leadership. RSS leaders have repeatedly claimed that the Sangh was not formed for rewards or recognition, but for nation-building through tyag (sacrifice) and seva (service).

Opposition parties are not missing this opportunity to corner the RSS and the BJP. Ayodhya is in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, currently ruled by a saffron-clad, monk-turned-politician, the BJP’s Adityanath.

“The silence of the prime minister and the home minister is shocking,” said Jairam Ramesh, a senior leader of the Congress, India’s main opposition party. He took digs at the RSS, saying that they “try to give certificates to others for integrity, honesty and nationalism,” but have themselves “been caught in a most disgraceful and shameful manner.”

The Ayodhya dispute has shaped Indian politics for more than four decades. Political scientists have frequently described the Ram Temple movement as one of the defining episodes in post-independence Indian politics. It played a pivotal role in the rise of Hindu nationalists in India in the 1990s, especially in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state.

Spearheaded by two RSS family organizations — the BJP and the VHP — the movement involved the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. This 16th-century mosque stood at the present temple site. After a prolonged legal battle, the Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that a Ram Temple stood at the place of the mosque.

While holding that the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid was an egregious violation of the rule of law, the apex court awarded the disputed land for the construction of a Ram Temple. The court said that archaeological evidence pointed to an underlying non-Islamic structure.

With the........

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