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Before we move to the unsavoury saga of donation money running into crores being siphoned off at the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir, let us cast a backward glance at its grand inauguration that took place on January 22, 2024, a few weeks before a general election was to take place.

It was a moment when the media projected the prime minister as a demi-god for the first time, a framing that Modi was to use famously during the election trail that followed when he declared that he was a non-biological being.

The January spectacle was designed to invest an omnipotence to the prime ministerial figure as he conducted himself as “yajman” (chief pujari) to the ceremony of consecration. Champat Rai, then secretary of the Ram Temple Trust, now in bad odour, played up this spiritual framing at that point. He made the widely reported observation that Modi, as “king,” has to be considered the incarnation of Vishnu.

That overblown comparison should have rung warning bells about the unholy nexus between those put in charge of managing the flow of unlimited cash from millions of believers and those who wielded the levers of power. But history shows that the media, far from taking note of this sycophancy and potential source of corruption, preferred to revel in the government-concocted spectacle that was playing out before them and ran headlines like “Lord Ram’s Grand Return to Ayodhya Temple After 500-Year Struggle.”

The question that now arises is whether the financial malfeasance that has cast a shadow on Hindutva’s most ambitious and rewarding political project would have manifested itself if the mainstream media had proved more independent. By totally embedding themselves in this project, they signalled that they were more than willing to suspend their disbelief, critical faculties and investigative powers. This must have also fuelled the confidence of the scamsters in being able to mask their designs in ceremonial fluff.   

Following the completion of the inaugural Pran Pratishtha ceremonies, the story was by no means over. There was a great deal to be scrutinised after the celebrity guests had left.

Also read: Time to Confront the Larger Corruption Without Which the Ram Temple Would Never Have Come Into Being

How were the trustees going to manage vast land resources that had been handed over to them after the Supreme Court verdict? How was the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust that was to manage the shrine registered? Was it really independent, as it was meant to be? Who among the trustees had voting power? How were the two personalities who quickly became synonymous with the trust, Anil Mishra and Champat Rai, conducting themselves? Were they guilty of playing favourites; of allowing those they ‘trusted’ to take advantage of the trust? How many audits were meant to be conducted and were their findings presented to the trustees and the public at large? What checks and balances were operating to ensure that the donations pouring in didn’t end up in the wrong hands? Why did not every single step designed to check graft – regular updating of records, preservation of CCTV camera footage, special uniforms for the counting staff, frisking procedures for staff entering and exiting the premises – serve the purpose for which they were set up? Why were these measures allowed to come undone as the days passed?

Any journalist with the right contacts could have followed the temple money trail and concluded that something was rotten in the system, far before that haul of Rs 2.25 lakh along with jewels and foreign currency surfaced in a bathroom in the complex. Clearly, the media were either too over-awed or too intimidated to deliver the required stories on an issue of monumental importance to the country.

Once this story was broken after the discovery of those unaccounted bundles of money and after local whistleblowers had come up with possible explanations, it seemed that the media had somehow shaken off the spell they were under. By June some were even displaying an appetite for competing among themselves to get to the kernel of the story. Adani’s NDTV put out headlines like “How big is this Chanda Cartel? Only NDTV has the whole story.”

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But as the days went by, the desire to let the Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party off the hook threaded through the critical coverage. News18’s Pallavi Ghosh did a programme that carried the alarming headline, “The Loot went on for years.” She sternly asked her guest, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) spokesperson Desh Ratan Nigam, whether he saw all this as a “bit of an embarrassment.”

He did not seem to have a convincing answer, so she turned to BJP spokesperson Sanju Verma, who is never known to speak in the normal decibel range. “First things first,” screamed Verma, “As a proud Hindu am I pained by all this? Oh certainly…But does the opposition have the locus standi to give lectures to the BJP and dole out integrity related certificates? Certainly not.”

She then went directly to 1990 and how Mulayam Singh Yadav had fired on kar sewaks. This “firing on kar sewaks” trope was a particularly favoured one this season – almost every BJP spokesperson resorted to this gambit, rife with emotion guaranteed to trigger the audience into forgetting the current heist.

Watching these spokespersons in action would have been amusing if it was not so........

© The Wire