International media coverage of Monday’s Ram temple inauguration has billed the consecration in Ayodhya by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a triumph of muscular Hindu nationalism that will redefine India.
In a news report headlined, “India’s Modi Marks Triumph for Hindu Nationalism by Opening Temple Where Mosque Was,” The Wall Street Journal said: “Prime Minister Narendra Modi consecrated a grand Hindu temple at the site where a 16th-century mosque was destroyed by a mob, a key milestone in the Indian leader’s reshaping of the country from a secular republic into a Hindu nation.”
The New York Times report was similarly headlined and the triumph of Hindu nationalism found mention in The Washington Post coverage as well, indicating a near consensus across the spectrum of the US media on the trajectory India is taking under Modi.
“Modi Opens a Giant Temple in a Triumph for India’s Hindu Nationalists’’ was the Times’s headline for the consecration report.
“Thirty-one years after the Babri Mosque was destroyed in a seismic event in modern Indian history, Modi’s consecration of a $300 million Hindu temple on the contested hill that many Hindus believe to be the birthplace of a beloved deity marked another watershed for India: the triumph of Hindu nationalist ideology over the secular, multicultural vision espoused by thecountry’s founders,” the Post noted.
CNN described the inauguration as a “crowning moment for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist ambitions months before he seeks to win a rare third term in elections” while the BBC headlined the report: “India PM Modi inaugurates Hindu temple on razed Babri mosque site”.
The Guardian in its editorial saw the temple consecration by the Prime Minister as “an alarming new era for India” and talks about Modi’s “dangerous majoritarianism” and how he has melded the political and religious to such a degree that he is now cast as a “high priest of Hinduism” who may not even need to rewrite the Constitution, “having reshaped his country so effectively already”.
The French newspaper, Le Monde, in an article titled, “Modi inaugurates Ayodhya temple, symbolising his changing India”, said: “India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a temple on Monday, January 22, which embodies his muscular Hindu nationalist politics, galvanising loyalists in an unofficial start to his re-election campaign this year.”
While The Times, London, called the temple inauguration “a new era”, the British newspaper, Financial Times said: “India’s Narendra Modi rides Hindu nationalism wave in Ayodhya temple opening”.
