By Nanditha Subhadra
Today, on November 25, 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally hoisted a massive saffron flag emblazoned with the image of Ram Lalla atop 191 feet shikhara of the Ram Janmabhoomi temple in Ayodhya. The spectacle was broadcast live across national television channels, complete with Vedic chants, aerial flower showers from helicopters, and crowds chanting “Jai Shri Ram.” Flanked by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, and key members of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, the event was framed as the triumphant “formal completion” of the temple, symbolizing the dawn of “Ram Rajya” after centuries of perceived injustice. Yet, this ceremonial act starkly contravenes the Agama Shastras and Dharmashastras, which reserve flag-hoisting (dhwaja-arohana) exclusively for qualified priests during annual Brahmotsavams on a front-facing dhwaja-stambha, not atop the sanctum’s vimana by a political leader—a deviation that traditional acharyas decry as a desecration of the deity’s sacred abode.
What unfolded was no mere religious rite but a meticulously orchestrated political extravaganza, timed to coincide with brewing state assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and bypolls elsewhere, designed to recapture the fervor of Hindu voters who propelled the BJP to power in 2014 and 2019. The saffron hue—iconic of Hindutva ideology—now fluttering permanently over the garbha-griha serves as visual shorthand for the party’s narrative of Hindu resurgence, blending devotion with electoral symbolism to consolidate a unified Hindu vote bank amid swelling disillusionment over economic distresses. This event, much like the January 2024 Pran Pratishtha in an incomplete temple, exemplifies how the “saffron brigade”—the BJP and its ideological fountainhead, the RSS—has systematically repurposed sacred sites into tools for mobilization, exploiting Hindu sentiments to deepen communal divides while eroding the sanctity of these spaces through scriptural violations and state-sponsored spectacles.
The Anatomy of Desecration: From Ayodhya to a National Template
The Ram temple’s journey from contested ruins to political trophy began with the 1980s Ram Janmabhoomi movement, orchestrated by the RSS-VHP combine, which catapulted the BJP from obscurity to dominance by framing the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 as a righteous reclamation. Each milestone since— the 2020 bhoomi pujan on the anniversary of Article 370’s abrogation, the rushed 2024 consecration amid visible scaffolding, and now this 2025 flag-hoisting—adheres to a political calendar rather than scriptural timelines, prioritizing optics over orthodoxy. In Ayodhya, Modi’s hands-on role in rituals meant for sannyasis or archakas, such as touching the idol’s eyes during netronmilana, introduces profane political energy into the divine, a degradation that mutt heads from Sringeri and Kanchi have labeled “adhura pratishtha” (incomplete consecration), potentially necessitating re-rituals to restore purity.
This pattern of desecration extends nationwide, where temples and disputed sites are weaponized to evoke historical grievances, fostering “us versus them” narratives that harvest votes at the cost of social harmony. The BJP’s interventions often involve deploying state machinery—public funds for “renovations,” heavy security for rallies, and media amplification—to turn these locales into perpetual campaign arenas, shifting focus from spiritual solace to sectarian strife.
Expanding the Fault Lines: The Gyanvapi Mosque Dispute and Cascading Communal Tensions
No examination of this politicization is complete without the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, Modi’s own parliamentary constituency, where a 17th-century structure built partially on the ruins of the Vishwanath temple—demolished by Aurangzeb in 1669—has ignited a firestorm of legal battles and street-level violence since the 1990s. The dispute, filed in 1991 by Hindu petitioners claiming the site as the original Kashi Vishwanath temple, gained explosive traction in 2022 when a court-ordered video survey allegedly uncovered a “shivling” in the mosque’s wuzukhana (ablution tank), prompting demands to halt Muslim prayers and reclaim the complex. By 2023, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) was mandated for a “scientific survey,” excluding the sealed wuzukhana per Supreme Court orders, but the findings—submitted in December 2023 and partially revealed in 2024—purportedly confirmed a pre-existing Hindu temple, fueling calls for demolition akin to Ayodhya. A Varanasi court in February 2024 even permitted Hindu pujas in a sealed basement, heightening fears of structural alterations.
These judicial escalations have not been abstract; they have spawned raw communal tensions, with the Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee accusing the BJP-led Uttar Pradesh government of engineering the conflict to polarize voters ahead of elections, violating the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, which freezes religious sites’ status as on August 15, 1947. Protests erupted in Varanasi’s narrow lanes, where barricades separated Hindu and Muslim neighborhoods, and police clashed with demonstrators, evoking memories of the 1992 post-Babri riots that killed thousands nationwide. Hindu right-wing groups like the VHP rallied thousands for “reclamation” marches, while Muslim leaders decried the surveys as “provocative encroachments,” leading to heightened security, curfews, and a palpable sense of disquiet—families avoiding Friday prayers out of fear, shops shuttering early, and interfaith dialogues fracturing under the weight of misinformation spread via social media.
The Gyanvapi saga has rippled outward, inspiring copycat claims that amplify divisions: in Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh, a November 2024 court-ordered ASI survey of the 16th-century Shahi Jama Masjid—allegedly built over a Harihar temple by Babur in 1529—turned deadly when protesters clashed with police, resulting in five Muslim deaths amid stone-pelting and tear-gas volleys, triggered by rumors of digging in the mosque’s reservoir. This violence, quelled only after deploying additional forces, drew sharp rebukes from opposition figures like Akhilesh Yadav, who accused the BJP of “deliberate polarization” for 2027 polls. Similarly, the Mathura Krishna Janmabhoomi-Shahi Idgah dispute mirrors Ayodhya’s blueprint, with petitions invoking Mughal “desecrations” to demand mosque removal, stoking local tensions through rallies and legal filings by the same Hindu litigants active in Gyanvapi. Even Somnath Temple in Gujarat, reconstructed post-Partition, is invoked in BJP speeches as a symbol of revival, tying historical narratives to contemporary campaigns that contrast “Hindu pride” with alleged minority encroachments.
The Saffron Brigade’s Playbook: Manipulating Sentiments for Electoral Supremacy
At its core, this is a calculated exploitation of Hindu emotions, where the RSS-BJP ecosystem recasts ancient wounds—temple destructions under Mughal rule—into modern battle cries, mobilizing kar sevaks and online armies to equate temple “liberation” with national salvation. The 1990 Rath Yatra by L.K. Advani, which snowballed into the Babri demolition and nationwide riots, set the template: sentimental yatras, amplified by media, polarize communities, boosting BJP’s vote share in Hindu-majority belts from 2 seats in 1984 to 303 in 2019. Today, Gyanvapi’s “shivling” discovery is memed into victory symbols, while Sambhal’s tragedy is spun as “inevitable resistance,” deepening the religious chasm to marginalize Muslims as perpetual “outsiders.”
Critics, from the All India Muslim Personal Law Board to diaspora voices protesting in global cities, warn of a slide toward majoritarianism, where the Places of Worship Act is routinely bypassed, opening floodgates for over 3,000 dormant claims. The electoral calculus is stark: post-Ayodhya surges in 2024, despite seat losses, underscore how these flashpoints deliver dividends in states like UP, where communal polarization trumps bread-and-butter issues.
Restoring Ritual Purity: A Scriptural Anchor Amid the Storm
To highlight the desecration’s depth, consider the shastras’ unyielding mandates: Pran Pratishtha demands a fully constructed temple with sealed garbhagriha and kalasha, followed by 48-day homas performed solely by archakas; dhwaja-arohana limits flags to deity-insignia bearing cloths on stambhas, barring political banners or lay involvement. Violations, as in Ayodhya and the rushed Gyanvapi surveys, risk rendering rituals void, prioritizing power over piety.
By hoisting a political saffron flag atop the garbha-griha in blatant violation of the shastras, and by repeatedly staging half-scriptural spectacles in Ayodhya, Gyanvapi, Sambhal and beyond, Narendra Modi and the saffron brigade have done something far graver than mere ritual deviation. They have deliberately weaponised the deepest emotional and sentimental attachment that millions of Hindu devotees feel for their temples and deities, and converted that pure bhakti into a captive vote bank.
Every tear shed by a devotee at the sight of Ram Lalla, every sigh of relief after five centuries of waiting, every pang of historical hurt over broken temples has been systematically harvested, amplified, and redirected—not toward spiritual liberation, but toward keeping one political ecosystem in power. The devotee’s joy at seeing a temple rise is real; the feeling that “finally, someone is fighting for us” is genuine. Yet that very emotion is being cold-bloodedly manipulated: timed for election cycles, packaged with state-funded grandeur, and laced with communal venom so that fear and pride keep the Hindu voter emotionally chained to a single political address.
The greatest irony—and the deepest betrayal—is this: the ordinary Hindu pilgrim who stands in long queues with moist eyes, believing he is witnessing the triumph of dharma, is actually being used as sentimental cannon-fodder in a permanent electoral war. His faith is not being protected; it is being milked. His temple is not being purified; it is being turned into a perpetual campaign stage.
Until devotees themselves realise that their tears are being converted into ballots, and until they demand that their sacred spaces be returned to silence, serenity and scripture—free from flags of any political colour—the saffron brigade will continue to rule not through Ram Rajya, but through the calculated emotional enslavement of Ram’s own bhaktas.
