India: Modi Inaugurates Temple Dedicated to Main Hindu Deity on Site of Razed Mosque

You know.

I think Modi is okay.

But he’s a Jew lover and I don’t think he should be doing this to the Moslems.

Especially not right now.

NPR:

With priests chanting and blowing conch shells, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the consecration of a controversial Hindu temple in this north Indian town on Monday. The ceremony was capped by the unveiling of a 51-inch black stone idol of the Hindu god Ram.

The temple inauguration marks the culmination of a decades-long dispute over a site that Hindus believe is the birthplace of their Lord Ram. In 1992, a mob egged on by leaders of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, now led by Modi, tore down a 16th century mosque. Riots that followed killed over 2,000 people, most of them Muslim.

Political analysts say the destruction of the mosque boosted the BJP’s electoral fortunes. Construction of the new Ram temple began in 2020, after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hindu litigants. Modi himself led the foundation stone that year.

“Our Lord Ram isn’t going to be in a tent anymore,” said Modi following Monday’s consecration. “Our Lord Ram will be in a grand temple.”

Until the Supreme Court’s verdict in 2019, an idol of Lord Ram was kept in a tent near the site where the temple has now been built — a grand temple that many Indians have long hoped to see.

“Lord Ram is our god, our ancestor, our king,” says Pooja Kashyap, a 28-year-old from Ayodhya, who spoke with NPR before performing Hindu rituals at Ayodhya’s Sarayu river. “It’s very important that he should be in his temple.”

But the $220 million temple isn’t yet finished. An official at the trust overseeing construction says it will need another year and a half to wrap up. Political analysts say the consecration was performed so the prime minister could show it off as an achievement ahead of national elections set for this spring. Modi’s party had long promised to construct a temple to Ram on this spot.

Critics of the BJP call the temple a monument to India’s fast-eroding secularism.

“The idea is to assert Hindu supremacy,” says Ziya Us Salam, a veteran journalist at the Indian daily The Hindu and author of Being Muslim in Hindu India. “There is one religion which is supreme in the country, and everybody else who is a non-follower of that religion is reduced to the status of a second-class citizen.”

Many Indian public schools and colleges declared a holiday on Monday, and civil servants working for the central government and some states were given a half-day off. Modi exhorted people to light lamps in celebration, and BJP volunteers distributed rice in the name of Lord Ram.

Modi stands for his own people, which is fine.

But what is the purpose of shitting all over other people?