The Mandir moment as the Modi moment

After Ayodhya, the Prime Minister has a legacy to build on. Delivering on promises made after the consecration ceremony can be a beginning

- Rajdeep Sardesai

In 2014, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) patriarch LK Advani, amid a power struggle with his protégé Narendra Modi, almost dismissively referred to the latter as a "brilliant events manager". A decade later, Prime Minister (PM) Modi has proved his "event management" mettle: The Ram temple pran pratishtha ceremony in Ayodhya was a religio-political spectacle of a kind that post-1947 India hasn't seen, combining State power, religious fervour, media frenzy and popular sentiment. Perhaps, the closest parallel is Advani's rath yatra in 1990, which propelled the BJP firmly onto the centrestage of Indian politics.

Now, the consecration of the Ram Lalla idol promises to thrust the BJP and PM Modi into a dominant force for some time to come.

In a sense, the "Ram moment" is also a "Modi moment", one that could secure his place in history. If successfully hosting a G20 summit led to the PM being projected as a "vishwaguru" by his supporters, the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir and the Balakot response to Pakistan after the Pulwama terror attack conferred a muscular nationalist aura around his persona.

Now, the Ram temple ceremonies place Modi on another level, which is akin to a modern day Hindu king or a Hindu hriday samrat (king of Hindu hearts), whose appeal transcends traditional fault lines of a diverse religion. When the PM welcomes Lord Ram's "ghar wapsi" from tent to temple and claims that 1,000 years from now people will talk about January 22 as a momentous date, he is invoking a sense of Hindu pride and emotion.