Building a Ram temple at the very site of the 16th century Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was a key demand of the the Bharatiya Janata Party and Sangh parivar since the 1980s and so committed was it to this goal that its leaders conspired to demolish the mosque in 1992.
As prime minister, Narendra Modi succeeded in getting the Supreme Court to prioritise the title suit for the site over the criminal case for the demolition. In a controversial 2019 judgment, the court handed the mosque's land to the very forces involved in the demolition, clearing the way for the construction of the Ram temple.
The Modi government took charge of the project by appointing key officials to the trust tasked with building the temple, while the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh took over land and demolished structures-including homes and shops-deemed to be in the way of its plans to develop Ayodhya as a major destination for religious tourism.
The project rode roughshod over local sentiments and led eventually to one of the biggest ironies of the 2024 general election: the BJP's loss of Faizabad, the Lok Sabha constituency in which Ayodhya lies.
In this short documentary, Rough Cut Productions tells the story.
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