Ram and the strongman: Modi looks unstoppable in India’s election

The CIty of Ayodhya is central to the story of Ram, one of Hinduism’s most revered deities. It is also central to the fortunes of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Starting in the late 1980s, the BJP agitated for the replacement of a 450-year-old mosque in Ayodhya with a temple, because it occupied the spot where Ram had supposedly been born. In 1992 a mob worked into a frenzy by fire-breathing speeches by the bjp’s leaders did indeed destroy the mosque, prompting riots across India in which some 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed. Since then, despite the bloodshed, the BJP has pledged at election after election to get the temple built. It is therefore hard to imagine a more triumphant moment for Narendra Modi, the prime minister, than the ceremony he will lead on January 22nd, when the long-awaited temple will at last be consecrated.