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FIVE MONTHS AFTER Narendra Modi began his second term as prime minister, the Supreme Court delivered his government a momentous gift. On 9 November 2019, it settled a land dispute in Ayodhya, stretching back over a century, in favour of the Hindu Right. The push to build a Ram Mandir was at the political centre of a decades-long fight for the soul of India—a struggle whose most violent chapter was the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid, one of the most egregious acts of communal vandalism in independent India’s history.
Despite a token acknowledgment that the mosque’s destruction by a Hindu mob had been a criminal act, the judgment was a massive symbolic victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party. It was proof that the party could deliver on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s dream of a Hindu Rashtra. The court mandated the union government to set up a trust within three months to oversee the construction of the temple. On the face of it, this was meant to be neither a government body nor an extension of the ruling party. But what it was going to be was that the Sangh would become the custodian of one of the most politically charged religious institutions in modern India, receiving land, donations and extraordinary public trust.
Modi announced the formation of the trust in parliament, on 5 February 2020, framing the issue as a “very important and historical subject for the country” and declaring that the trust would “be fully autonomous to take any decision regarding the construction of the temple.” The Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra would be staffed with 15 members, including the magistrate or district collector of Ayodhya and representatives of the union and Uttar Pradesh governments—with the trust deed explicitly instructing that members must be “practising Hindus.” The rest of the trustees were drawn from various monastic orders. Many of those presented as independent figures had been key in sustaining the Ram Mandir campaign or were bureaucrats who had been influential in various projects of the Sangh.
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