For four decades, the Ram Janmabhoomi movement—or the campaign to build a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya—was the defining calling card of the BJP-RSS-VHP combine. Apart from being a zealous political campaign, it was shrewdly projected as a so-called civilisational mission, a “peoples’ movement” to reclaim Hindu identity and to right the so-called “historical wrongs” of the medieval period and Muslim invasions.
In practice, it became one of the most consequential exercises in politico-religious mobilisation in independent India. Over the decades, “Hindu rage” was deliberately and systematically whipped up. Religious identity was weaponised and transformed into political identity. Secularism was portrayed as the enemy. Muslims were repeatedly cast as the hated “other”. The purpose: consolidate a Hindu vote and propel the BJP to national power.
