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The ‘Ram Janmabhoomi Movement’ that involved L.K. Advani’s Ram Rath Yatra, his arrest in Bihar, and the demolition of the Babri Masjid – all in the 1990s – played a pivotal role in altering the psyche of large sections of Hindu society and the subsequent change in India’s political landscape.

Prime minister Narendra Modi’s reign from 2014 onwards has witnessed the systematic sidelining of the “original heroes” of that movement – Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Ashok Singhal, Uma Bharti, Praveen Togadia, Vinay Katiyar et al. Yet the Modi-Amit Shah duo has made enormous political capital out of the Hindu-Muslim divide, the seeds of which were sown in the 1990s.

Be it the ruling Sangh Parivar’s growing clout over institutions such as the judiciary, or the investigating agencies that aid the judicial process, its control over public narratives, or otherwise, the construction of the Ram temple at the site where the Babri Masjid once stood, following the Supreme Court’s order, is largely credited to Modi, particularly by sections of Hindu society in the Hindi heartland.

And by acting as the jajman at the consecration ceremony of the new Ram temple at Ayodhya ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Modi emerged as the most potent Hindu Hriday Samrat.

Obviously, the alleged embezzlement of chadhawa (offerings) before Lord Ram and chanda (donations) for the temple in cash and jewellery worth crores of rupees has driven observers of politics and religion to fathom its impact on the Hindu society’s faith in Modi and his apparatus, if not in Ram.

The questions in the minds of these observers include: If the Ram Janmabhoomi movement created what the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – the fountainhead of all the Sangh Parivar affiliates, including the BJP – describes as a Hindu navjagaran (renaissance), will the unprecedented heist of Ramdhan (God’s wealth) have no bearing on the minds of Hindus?

If invoking Ram’s name created huge political capital for the BJP, will the alleged embezzlement of the chadhawa and chanda for Ram not jolt people’s faith in the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, manned by RSS........

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