India is on the verge of eclipsing China as the world’s most populated country, but its religious fault lines have become starker, a testament to the perils of rising Hindu nationalism in a constitutionally secular country.
India is home to some 200 million Muslims who make up the predominantly Hindu country’s largest minority group. They are scattered across almost every part of India, where a systemic anti-Muslim fury has descended since Prime Minister Narendra Modi first assumed power in 2014.
Since then, the city of Ayodhya has, in many ways, become a religious microcosm of India, where a diverse, multicultural past has gradually been overrun by ruptured relationships between Hindus and Muslims.They have meandered through its narrow, winding streets overrun by temple monkeys and Hindu monks who ask passersby for blessings in exchange for alms. They have walked past its brimming bazaars where miniature idols of Ram are sold to pilgrims visiting from India’s vast hinterlands.
“Our forefathers have fought for this temple and sacrificed lives for it. Today their dream is getting fulfilled,” he says, circled by a group of devotees.The temple is being constructed where the 16th-century Babri mosque was demolished by Hindu hardliners who claim Muslim rulers built it at the exact spot where Ram was born. When it was razed on Dec. 6, 1992, Das was there, watching a frenzied Hindu mob climb its rounded domes and tear it down with pickaxes and crowbars.
“There was so much excitement to destroy that disgraced structure that no one cared about the falling debris,” he recounts, prompting his disciples to chant “Jai Sri Ram,” or “Hail Lord Ram,” a slogan that has become a battle cry for Hindu nationalists.
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